


Meet Me at Sunset

by sarahbeniel



Series: Forever is Now [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Sex, F/M, Gun Violence, Panic Attack Comfort, Plot, Romance, Slow Burn, WinterShock - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-05 16:10:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 36
Words: 230,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17328236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahbeniel/pseuds/sarahbeniel
Summary: It’s just like one of his nightmares:  explosions of images, shards of memory and confusion… but there’s too much noise, everything too sharp for a dream …  and growing in the panic— the tug of recognition, pulling on him like a slow-burned scream… yet through it all the words in his head, the damn words that would pull him back under the bloody water…  and then he’s remembering… he’s remembering,  and he’s tumbling out the hole into empty space, and he’s falling again— God, not again— but no, that’s not right:  she’s the one who’s falling— and he’s following, falling together…





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> After a lot of thinking and reading of other fics I've dropped the rating on this from E to M. I think there's a lot of overlap in the border between E & M, and all I can say is that this _feels_ more like an M to me. The eventual sex is vanilla, and while descriptive at times, I think it would be a letdown to people looking for a good filthy E read. There is brief violence and gore, but again, I'm not sure it's worth rating it E and alienating most of the M readers who would be totally fine with it. If you are an on-the-fence M reader and want to know more before you read, PLEASE feel free to email me (address in my profile) for more info.  
> 
> 
> Thank you to my beta Chocogypto for reading, making suggestions, finding my mistakes, and putting up with me when I was being a whiny bitch because I didn't want to fix plot holes.  
> 
> 
> [my Tumblr](https://sarahbeniel.tumblr.com)  
> 

Darcy Lewis was lucky, and she knew it.

She’d fallen asleep at the desk again, and when the emergency alarm tripped on, the sensory assault of it shocked her awake like she’d been zapped by her own taser. It was the worst thing she’d ever heard— like a coked-up emergency vehicle: just two wretched notes see-sawing back and forth between high and low, drilling into her ears, vibrating through all of her cells.

She knew what she was supposed to do: _calmly assess the situation and determine a logical response_. But for something that was meant to be a call to action, it did the opposite— she was in a full-scale fight-or-flight response. She wasn't trained for this shit; she was only a lowly assistant, for God’s sake.

Darcy’s luck wasn’t in landing her dream job. Her temporary role of scientist-wrangler had evolved into something more permanent, and while she was grateful for the over-generous checks she now received, she knew there was more to her than feeding, watering, and organizing someone else’s potential. Until she figured out what that _more_ was, she was happy to do the bare minimum— and that was usually good enough… except for times like this, when she had no idea what the fuck to do— and it showed.

She’d recovered from the initial shock of the sonic onslaught, and now she was rhythmically chanting, “ _Off switch, off switch_ ,” her small, pale hands shaking as she scanned the hundreds of LEDs, tactile buttons, and toggle switches on the control panel in front of her.

Jane had complained during orientation that Darcy’d only been half-listening— she was relying on Darcy to handle this stuff, so that Jane could focus on her research— but half-listening would have been generous. Can people fourth-listen? She’d been more interested in checking out the ass on the guy they’d sent over for the training session, than anything he’d had to say.

Darcy wasn’t lucky to have a special person in her life, unless you counted Jane, who was a pretty good friend when she wasn’t completely lost in her research or testing some cobbled-together equipment— even more so since Thor had vamoosed back to Asgard after Sokovia, and Darcy had been the most convenient person for Jane to lean on. Platonic feels were no substitute for the romantic variety, but it was nice to have a friend, especially during the long, lonely stretch where the only love Darcy was getting was the battery-operated variety. Still, she was pretty sure the second Thor came back, Jane wouldn’t have quite the same need for her company outside of work. And that was just fine. Really. Darcy was understanding that way.

“Focus, Lewis,” she muttered, but the alarm was so epically evil it just made her want to smash something. She needed the noise to stop, so she could think clearly and move on to the real issue: who was approaching, and why? They’d been told there might be supplies flown in to supplement the regular ground deliveries, but she was supposed to know about them ahead of time— and nobody had said anything about a fucking Doom Alarm. She would have remembered that. Right?

Darcy definitely wasn’t lucky in the cards she’d been dealt for self-worth and respect: in fact, a lot of her brain-space lately seemed to be devoted to a stream of abusive personal commentary. Her SHIELD-appointed therapist— back when SHIELD was still a thing— would have refused to accept these inner voices as the jokes Darcy made them out to be, insisting that the humor she used wasn’t enough to mitigate the damage done by so much negative self-talk. Darcy knew the lady had been right, but maybe being a little bit funny was all she had, until something better came along. If you stripped that away, what was left? A whole lotta bummery bum-land.

Darcy had a lot of reasons to feel sorry for herself, if she wanted to focus on the negative, but today— right now— she felt lucky. Why? Because nobody was around to witness her ineptitude firsthand.

The alarm was relentless, as alarms tend to be. “God, _shut up already_ ,” she moaned, and then said, “Fuck it.” She dove under the desk, looking for a reset button or a cord she could pull. There was a huge black box underneath the desk that reminded her of a surge-protection unit for a home computer, but on a much larger scale. It had a red rocker switch on its side, next to an array of cables snaking out to connect to the underside of the control panel. She had absolutely no idea what it was for, or what would happen if she touched it. She scrunched up her face up as though bracing for an explosion, and pressed the switch.

The noise cut off instantly, and she popped her head up to the panel again: the entire thing blinked out for two seconds. Then, with an audible _click_ , the system came back to life, along with the insufferable klaxon.

“What the actual fuck,” she said, scrambling back to her feet. She resumed her frantic scanning of the console and its bizarrely unhelpful labeling system. Shouldn’t there be, like, a huge red _OFF_ button somewhere, under a clear flip-up cover, like in the movies? Nope— the tactile buttons were all pretty much the same— some red, some white, all of them square— and had ridiculous labels like _Quaker_ and _Thing 3_. What fucking smart-ass designed this console, anyway? Oh yeah. Because when you’re as wealthy as Tony Stark, being annoyingly cryptic is a mark of genius.

As soon as she’d had the thought, her Starkphone lit up, blasting out a heavy-metal ringtone from where it lay face-up on the control panel. She glanced at the screen— as expected, it said, _No Caller ID_ , though she had a pretty good idea who it was, and she scrambled to pick it up.

“What!” She barked, holding it to her ear.

“Having a problem, short-stuff?”

Yup. It was Mr. Stark. “Kinda busy right now,” she said, hoping her tone conveyed a ‘ _you’ve-interrupted-my-important-work_ ’ kind of edginess rather than the more truthful ‘ _I am losing my shit because I don’t know what I’m doing_.’

“Need some help?” He was calm in the way that invited a good punch to the face, and it sounded like he was munching on something dry, like a pretzel stick.

“No!” She switched the phone to speaker mode, put it back on the desk, and stared at the panel. Maybe she should just press them all. But should she do it one-by-one, or just go for one big mash, like a wave across the surface?

As if he could read her mind, she heard him blurt out, “Red button on the left-hand side, third row, next to the blue dial.”

Darcy scanned the control panel furiously, and found a small red button right where he said it would be. It was square, like all the others, and said _Hervé_ on it. She smacked it with extreme prejudice, and the alarm blessedly cut off, leaving Darcy to fall back into the overpriced task chair in relief, ears ringing.

“What the fuck, Mr. Stark, was that a test or something?” He didn’t answer, and she muttered, “I’m going to have fucking hearing damage.” In the vacuum of silence, she relaxed for a second, only to sit up again abruptly, hissing out another curse.

“There a problem?”

“Yes, there’s a problem, goddammit. I fucked up my manicure again,” she said, glaring down at the ragged red polish on her right hand. “Must’ve still been wet when I fell asleep. _Fuck_.”

“Uh….”

She bent down to check her toes, done up in the same vibrant red. She carefully removed the cotton balls from between them, and tested the nails with a light touch of her index finger. “At least the toes are okay.”

Abruptly, she sat up again and started opening all the drawers under the desk, rummaging through the tangle of junk inside. “Jesus, what a mess…”

“Hey, call me Tony.” Guy thought he was funny. He was still crunching on something.

“Um… okay. Anyway, what’s going on? Are you spying on me? Did I fail your stupid test?"

“Huh? No!” He sounded affronted. “Who do you think I am, SHIELD? No spying around here. Well, maybe sometimes. Just a bit. But not right now. What did you want again?”

“Mr. Stark— I mean, Tony— you’re the one who called me. I don’t even know how to call you.” Finding what she needed in the last drawer, she slammed it shut, cursed when a tangle of cables prevented it from closing, squashed them down violently, and pushed the drawer in with her foot.

“Seriously?” said Stark. “Hang on a sec…”

Her phone, still sitting on the desk, lit up with a loud _ding_.

“Contacts updated,” he said. “So anyway, I know you and the mini-scientist— Ow!”

Darcy smiled— Jane must have overheard him and had probably thrown a wrench at him or something. Jane was tiny, but she was fierce.

“Excuse me— _Dr. Foster_ and you are doing a bang-up job over there, but I wanted to let you know that there’s a place here for you two if you want to, you know, move it over to the Tower full time."

“Oh,” said Darcy, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice. The ‘cabin’, as Stark liked to call it, was the nicest place she’d ever lived, by a long-shot, but living in the middle of Manhattan in Stark Tower? That was something else entirely. But why the sudden offer? “What’s going on?” she asked. “You need Jane there full-time or something?”

“Oh, no reason,” said Stark, in a horrible sing-song way that confirmed there was most definitely a reason, but that he was not going to share.

“Okay,” she said, deciding not to push it. “Good to know.” She was distracted, busy ripping a piece of white duct tape off the roll she’d found in the drawer. She wrote _EVIL_ on it in black Sharpie, and stuck it over the alarm shutoff button. “So…was that it?”

“Oh, uh… also, Hawk-ass is gonna be stopping by any minute to drop off some stuff.”

“Oh, cool,” said Darcy. “I’ve never actually met Hawkeye."

“His real name’s Barton. And I need you to keep him away from my import beer fridge. Hey, uh… sorry-not-sorry about the alarm, by the way; just wanted to make sure you’d be awake when I called.”

Darcy frowned. “Are you saying that thing doesn’t always go off like that?”

“Not for one of ours; normally if you hear that thing, it’s truly an ‘oh shit’ situation— ergo the ‘oh shit’ nature of the audio— but when I saw that you were drooling on the panel, I remotely overrode the system to give you a little wake-up call.”

Darcy narrowed her eyes even further. “Wait, you can see me? You _are_ spying on me!” Her mind flashed uncomfortably to the recent memory of her late-night dancing to "Thriller" in the buildings’s open-concept kitchen and dining room, as she’d waited for her soup to heat up, in nothing but a ratty sleep shirt and her granny panties, using a wooden spoon as a microphone. Darcy was in a good place with her curvy body, and wasn’t one to hide it, but braless dancing in her underwear was not something she tended to do for an audience.

Jesus. What if he had stills, for future blackmail?

“These cameras, are they everywhere? What about the bedrooms? Oh my God, bathrooms?!?”

“Calm your tits, Michael Jackson; only the public areas are monitored. Weren’t you paying attention during the orientation?”

“Uh huh,” she said, unimpressed. “So where’s this fridge I’m supposed to keep him away from?”

<<>>

The landing zone was in a clearing behind the main grounds— an easy walk from the rear gate, near the entrance to the forest that went on for miles. Just one of Tony’s many hidden properties, he referred to this one as the ‘cabin,’ which made Darcy and Jane roll their eyes. A cabin was a shack in the woods that might have indoor plumbing, if you were lucky. Where guys gathered to fish and drink whiskey, or where teenagers got murdered in horror movies. With an advanced security system, a state-of-the art chef’s kitchen, a modern home gym with adjacent outdoor pool-and-patio area, an entire second floor of living quarters and a huge, technologically-blessed work-room, this was no cabin.

Darcy and Jane had taken to calling it ‘Stark Redoubt,’ in light of the reconfiguration of the Avengers after Sokovia— the new group had taken over the big upstate property for their HQ, while Avengers Tower had reverted back to Stark Industries’ exclusive use, at least on paper. The Redoubt, originally intended to be a private living-and-work haven for Tony, Dr. Banner, and whomever else was invited to his science benders, it’d been mostly empty since Dr. Banner, as the Hulk, had vanished on a stolen Quinjet after Sokovia. Pepper Potts had finally convinced Tony to invite Jane to stay and work there full-time, doubling as caretaker— and where Jane went, Darcy followed.

Now, she sat alone on a folding chair, drinking a very expensive beer, watching the sky for the aircraft she knew was coming. The Quinjet was a lot quieter than she’d expected. Or maybe her ears were just destroyed now, thanks to that damn alarm. She’d quickly set up the chairs and the cooler a good distance away from the landing zone, expecting something deafening, like the planes she knew from growing up near an Air Force base. But the Quinjet was sleek and futuristic, more like one of the alien craft from the Battle of New York.

She took another swig of beer and watched the jet set down gracefully on its rear wheels, kicking up dirt, and then smoothly angle forward to touch down completely. It powered down with a final hiss, and then a back hatch opened, becoming a ramp that slanted down to the ground. A minute later, a well-muscled man with trim, sandy blond hair stepped down the ramp, and gave her a cheerful wave.

“You Lewis?” he called, as he headed her way. He was wearing close-fitting black tac pants, a tight black shirt that hugged his muscles, and black sunglasses. She unashamedly admired the view as he neared her, and mentally took stock of her own disheveled appearance. It’d been hot and muggy for days, and her standard summer uniform of cutoff jeans, baggy tank-top and hair swept up in a messy bun suddenly felt slovenly. She hastily pulled her hair out of the bun, letting loose her deep brown waves.

“Yup, that’s me,” she said, rising from her chair. “Darcy Lewis.” She held out her hand and the man shook it once, firm but friendly. He was of average stature, but still seemed tall next to Darcy’s five-foot-three.

“Clint Barton,” he said, taking off his sunglasses, and giving her an easy smile. “Good to meet you.”

“Likewise. Wanna beer?”

<<>>

Barton tipped the bottle back, finished the beer with a satisfied exhale, and set the empty bottle on the ground next to the cooler. The folding chair squeaked as he sat back, relaxed.

“Say what you will about Tony,” he said, “but he’s got decent taste in beer.”

“Yup,” said Darcy, popping the “P” on the end of the word. “You got time for one more?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” said Barton, flipping open the cooler and fishing out another brown bottle. Darcy tossed him the opener and he snatched it out of the air without even looking, making Darcy grin behind the mouth of her own beer.

“So what’s your story, Lewis?” he said. “You work for Tony, out here by yourself?”

“Call me Darcy. And I wasn’t alone until a few days ago— Jane’s usually here with me.” After a beat she said, “Jane Foster, the scientist,” to clarify.

“Foster. You mean the lady from the desert? Thor’s girl?”

“That’s her,” said Darcy. “But don’t let her hear you call her that. She didn’t spend ten years in school getting advanced degrees, and then a crap-ton of research on her own dime just to be called _Thor’s Girl_.”

“Noted,” said Barton. “Didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”

“I know,” said Darcy. “To be honest, it’s kinda hard to feel significant when a frickin’ mythological demigod is standing next to you.” After a moment she said, “If she’s ‘Thor’s Girl’, what does that make me? Thor’s girl’s quirky sidekick?”

“Ah, that’s not a bad thing to be,” said Barton. “Sidekicks get to have all the fun, without the responsibility.”

“Amen to that,” she said, and clinked her bottle into his, before taking another long swig. “Seriously, though, my job is mostly just bullshit. Jane does all the real stuff, and my job is to file or organize whatever she gives me. And keep track of things for Pepper. Ms. Potts is the one who actually got me on payroll. Tony wanted to sponsor Jane; he didn’t need me. But Ms. Potts knows science-types, obviously, and she said she needed someone here to keep track of things and communicate, do the paperwork, all that fun stuff. And that I can do. Pays me way too much for it, honestly, but I’m not complaining. Even if it is boring as shit most of the time, especially like now, when Tony’s borrowing Jane.”

Barton raised his eyebrows. “Well, if I’m not mistaken, it’s about to get a lot more interesting around here. Or at least get you some company. If that’s what you’re craving.”

“Oh yeah? Do tell,” she said, sitting up.

“Well,” he said, drawing out the word, “Not sure I’m supposed to give you the details, but let’s just say in a couple of hours, you’re not gonna be wanting for testosterone around here.”

“Seriously?” she said, and she leaned forward. “Now you got me intrigued… Stark didn’t say a thing….” She frowned, remembering his offer to go to the Tower, and his evasion when she asked why. “Sure you can’t spill any details? Wait, did you say a couple of _hours_?”

“Yeah, sorry you didn’t get more notice. They got me zipped tight on this one. But let me know what else I can do for you— you need anything? Gettin’ sick of this fancy beer?”

She sat back again, recognizing that the other topic was a no-go, and pursuing it would be pointless. “How about a new iPod,” she joked. “I’m still trying to rebuild the music library that your SHIELD goons stole from me in New Mexico.”

Barton put his beer down. “That was you?” He looked genuinely remorseful. “Aw, sorry, kid. I remember that iPod… sorta made the rounds… good stuff on there. I’d get it back to you if I could, but it’s been years now."

“Yeah, I wasn’t serious— I mean, the tech is so out-of-date now anyway, what’s the point? I just wish I had a list of the songs I had. You know how you can’t even remember what you like sometimes until you see it?”

“Wish I could make it up to you,” he said.

“How about flying in some lasagne?” she joked. "All we got around here are these fancy TV dinners. I don't care how much quinoa and truffle oil you put into something; a frozen dinner's still a frozen dinner..."

“I’ll look into it,” he said, grinning, as he stood up from the chair and stretched his arms over his head. Darcy tried not to stare at the way his muscular upper body moved like living sculpture. Blonds weren’t her type, but those arms were too pretty to ignore. She must not have hidden her ogling very well, because he chuckled and looked down, hand on his hip, and then broke the spell by clapping his hands together, like a call to attention.

“So,” he said, “you wanna help me unload this stuff?”

“What is it?”

“Dunno. Probably more TV dinners.”

Darcy blew out a laugh as she stood up and dusted off her butt. “Sure, but we’re drinking more of this beer after.”

“Not gonna argue with that.”

<<>>

They’d finished unloading the supplies and had time for a few more beers, relaxing outside again as the evening unfolded. The forest surrounding the compound came alive at night, fireflies lighting random sparks to a soundtrack of crickets and frogs. Darcy had been a little freaked out by it when she’d first arrived, feeling the press of all those unseen souls coming from the darkness. She was used to it now, though, and even enjoyed sitting outside some nights when the heat started to go down a bit with the sun.

Darcy had persuaded Barton to demonstrate his archery skills, choosing tree trunks far in the distance as targets, until it became too dark for her to tell whether he was hitting the marks. She suggested he could use some of the exploding ones, but he refused with a hearty laugh, saying he didn’t want to start a forest fire, something Darcy hadn’t even considered.

Even with the setting of the sun, the air remained thick and muggy, and Darcy had given up and piled her hair back on top of her head. She could feel beads of sweat trickling down her neck and the line of her spine, and kept painfully unsticking her thighs from the seat of the folding chair. She didn’t know how Barton could stand it, in his full-body blacks. She was about to ask him, when their companionable silence was broken by an alert on his phone.

He looked down, taking a moment to check the message, and then stood up, tipped back the last of his beer, and set the bottle down among the little farm of empties they’d grown next to the cooler. “Time to go,” he said.

“You okay to drive?” she asked. “Fly? Whatever? There’s plenty of empty rooms if you wanna crash here. I promise I won’t try to drunk-grope you.”

“Naw, I’m fine,” said Barton, chuckling. “I ain’t no super-soldier like Steve— poor guy can’t get drunk no more even if he made it a mission— but I am trained in beer,” he joked. “Anyway, I gotta get this bird back to HQ. Ever since the shit went down in D.C., we gotta share what we have left. The D-oh-D seized most of the remaining squadron, but we ah… worked out a deal to keep a couple.”

“Okay then,” said Darcy. She stood up as well, and held out her hand. “It was good to meet you, and thanks for the company.”

“Likewise,” said Barton. He shook her hand and gave her a friendly grin that crinkled the skin near his eyes. He was charming as hell; Darcy felt like he would have tipped his hat to her if he’d been wearing one. He picked up his gear and nodded. “See ya, Darcy.” He turned back after a second and said, “Oh, and hey— I’ll probably be back in a couple days, if you decide you wanna pack up and go to the Tower.”

She watched him head back to the jet, and wondered what the heck was going on. Why was everyone assuming she’d want to leave? Was the Hulk back or something? Not that she’d necessarily flee, even if that were true. Jane had nothing but good things to say about Dr. Banner.

A couple minutes later, the turbofans and jets powered up, and the aircraft lifted straight up into the sky like a helicopter. The jets grew louder, and then it streaked off above the treetops and away into the night. She could barely hear it after a minute, and then Darcy was alone again with the crickets.

<<>>

After a very unsatisfying emergency dinner of 'gourmet' toaster pastries, she tried to kill some time fixing her manicure while she waited in the security room, wanting to spy on the newcomers as soon as they got there. It’d been well over the couple of hours that Barton had implied for their arrival window, and she was starting to get tired. She didn’t want to fall asleep on the console again. She wished she had more information.

She pulled out her phone and thumbed a quick message to Jane: _What’s shakin bacon? Stark done with you yet? Miss u. Hey, do you know what’s going on? Why does everyone keep suggesting I might want to get out of here? Do you know who our new roomies are? I’m losing my mind over here_.

She waited a minute, staring at the screen, but Jane didn’t respond. She was probably in the middle of something really important. Or eating real food. Cooked by an actual chef. Her stomach rumbled, unhappy with her food choices and mostly-liquid dinner. She’d been joking about the flown-in lasagne, but maybe she’d turn it into a real request. She yawned and stared at the security screens, willing the mystery guests to arrive.

She awoke suddenly, drooling on the console again, but this time it wasn’t the aircraft alarm— it was the vehicle alarm, which was far less evil. She was also used to the sound of this one, because of Mateo’s regular delivery of supplies every couple of weeks, and she knew how to shut it off.

This wasn’t Mateo, though— it was a plain black SUV. She normally had to enter in a code to let the delivery guy through the gate, but this driver apparently had his own code, and she watched as the gate swung open and the vehicle continued into the property’s large driveway, parking off to the side. It sat there a minute, and she held her breath as she waited to see who would emerge. She could see that there were at least two people inside— large men, by the looks of the shadowy outlines she could see— and her heart picked up a little. She didn’t like this, not knowing who was here, or why…

Both of the front doors popped open, and her heart sped up even more, but this time it wasn’t from fear. Jesus Christ. Barton hadn’t been kidding about the testosterone: it was Sam Wilson— aka the Falcon, and Captain fucking America. Now she really was pissed off that she hadn’t been given more warning: she was sleep-bedraggled, her hair was a rat’s nest, and she had dried drool on her face. Just how she’d always dreamed of meeting some of the hottest guys on the entire fucking planet.

She could see that they were both dressed casually, so apparently they weren’t coming straight from a mission. They were both just standing there, as though they were waiting for something. Finally, Wilson said something to the Captain— or rather, Steve Rogers, as he famously preferred to be called— and opened up the rear passenger door on his side. He crouched over— it looked like he was talking to someone inside— and then straightened up again and stepped back.

Darcy leaned even closer to the security screen— the suspense was killing her. She saw movement at the open door, and then she leaned back and sucked in her breath.

 _No way. No fucking way_.

The man who got out of the back seat was only visible for a moment— he turned away as soon as he emerged, and then slowly but purposefully stalked off, his back to the camera, until he was out of the frame. She switched the screens over to check the views for the other outdoor cameras, but she couldn’t figure out where’d he gone— he’d just slipped into the shadows.

It’d only been a matter of seconds, but it was long enough for Darcy to know what she’d seen. The short-sleeved shirt he was wearing hadn’t hidden a thing in the glow of the security lights— his entire left arm, including the hand, was a metallic prosthesis, molded to mimic the muscles and curves of a flesh-and blood limb. It was instantly recognizable.

It was the Winter Soldier.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do not despair at the few pages of background info at the beginning of this chapter-- hopefully this is as boring as it gets. I have this thing about making it readable even to people who aren't Bucky fanatics, so that's why the little dossier here.
> 
> BTW: While I've tagged this as canon divergent post CA:TWS, there are some specific concepts from CA:CW appearing in later chapters... they'll be obvious when you see them. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who is reading, commenting, bookmarking & leaving kudos. :)  
> \-------------------------------------

Darcy was staring blankly at the security screen, trying to get a handle on the situation. Of all the scenarios she could have imagined, this was not on the list. She’d considered a handful of intimidating possibilities, like the Hulk— but this? This was something entirely different.

Just like everyone else who’d had internet access during the collapse of SHIELD, she’d seen that arm in action in shaky online videos, its terrifying owner dressed in full tactical gear and a scary black mask, trying— and almost succeeding— to kill Captain America.

His real name was James Buchanan Barnes— “Bucky” to his friends— and Darcy had first learned about him in her high school history class, during the World War II unit. He’d been Steve Rogers’ best buddy, in the 30s and 40s— together in childhood, and then on the battlefields of Europe, taking on Hydra. They were practically together in death, as well— Barnes presumed dead after falling from a train in the Alps, and Rogers following him into oblivion shortly after, when he deliberately crashed a Hydra plane into the Arctic. It was all very tragic— and romantic.

While most of the girls in school (and a handful of guys) had had stars in their eyes for the blond-haired blue-eyed Captain America, Darcy had been more taken with dark-haired Sergeant Barnes. She’d spent a good amount of time staring at the handsome black-and-white photo of him in his army uniform, imagining she could see mischief in his eyes.

It was just after her first year working for Jane— the same year that Thor had fallen from the sky, and turned their lives upside-down— that the world was stunned to learn that Captain America was still alive. He’d been preserved in the Arctic ice for almost seventy years, and, incredibly, had survived in his frozen state, thanks to his super-soldier enhancement. He’d teamed up with Thor and other superheroes to form the Avengers, who became famous overnight by saving New York from alien invaders.

Then, almost three years ago, another super-solider had appeared— the so-called Winter Soldier— but this one was playing for the other team. An assassin in the service of Hydra— which was still very much operational, he’d faced Captain America, Falcon, and the Black Widow in a breathtaking street battle that was seen by millions, thanks to the internet. Darcy and Jane had watched the videos over and over, shocked by the ability of the masked man— if man he was, with at least one visible metal part— to take on not one, but three Avengers at once, nearly defeating them, and then apparently escaping intact.

Then came the rumors that the cyborg assassin was, incredibly, the Captain’s old friend and compatriot: Bucky Barnes, back from the dead. To the average online nerd, they were silly conspiracy theories, argued over in chat rooms, with pages of side-by-side comparison photos presented for analysis, most of which was ridiculed by the online community.

But Darcy knew more than the average internet nut-job. With her ties to Jane, who had contacts with the remains of SHIELD and the Avengers, Darcy knew that it had been quietly verified. Somehow, it really was true: the Winter Soldier was Sergeant James Barnes. Just like his friend, he’d survived all those years, hardly aging at all. But unlike Rogers, who’d slept peacefully through the decades, Barnes had suffered a different course— serving Hydra as one of their most valued assassins, when he wasn’t being stored in cryostasis.

The last confirmed sighting of him had been with Captain Rogers, on the burning wreck of an injured Helicarrier, falling from the sky over the Potomac. The Captain had plunged into the water, unconscious, and then _somebody_ had pulled him out, and left him on the muddy bank, leaving only some bootprints behind as evidence that he was ever there. According to Jane’s Avengers gossip, Rogers had been looking for him ever since— almost three years, now.

And here he was.

Darcy was torn: part of her wanted to run out the door and get a look at the man from her history book, and the other part was ready to barricade herself in her room.

<<>>

If Rogers and Wilson were alarmed by the Soldier’s disappearance into the shadows, they didn’t show it— she could see them talking normally as they went around to the trunk and pulled several duffel bags out.

Darcy checked the time on the security screen— it was after 11 p.m.— and then finally sprang into action. She grabbed her phone, shoved it into her shorts pocket, toed on her flip-flops, and jogged down the hall to the front entrance. _Don’t act freaked out. You’re a professional… something. Don’t do that word-vomit thing you do. It’s all cool_. She was nervous, but at the same time she was feeling increasingly pissed off that nobody had given her more of a heads-up, and her anger was giving her courage.

She banged out the front door, and she saw the two men react defensively to the sudden noise, which made her immediately raise her hands in the air, palms out, and yell, “Not a threat!” before someone could shoot her or throw a shield at her or something. She had no idea where the Soldier was, and she felt prickly, like there were eyes on her in the darkness somewhere.

The dark-skinned man— the Falcon— was walking calmly toward her. He was wearing fashionable jeans and a form-fitting black T-shirt which showed off a figure he’d obviously spent some time on; he looked like the kind of guy who could do a thousand crunches before breakfast. “You Darcy?” he said.

“Yup, that’s me— Darcy Lewis.” She held out her hand and he shook it.

“Sam Wilson. Good to meet you.”

Sam should have been intimidating, with his good looks, height, and muscular build, but as Darcy took his hand and shook it and met his dark brown eyes, all she felt from the man was a soft kindness, a quiet intelligence with a hint of mischief, and she felt herself open to him immediately. He had a gap between his front teeth, just like her.

Her own smile was easy and genuine as she released his hand, and then she tensed up again as she saw Captain America coming their way, carrying all three duffel bags.

“This here’s Steve, but you probably already knew that,” said Sam, gesturing to the blond-haired man.

Steve Rogers wasn’t at all what she’d expected. When you saw him on TV, there was a make-believe quality about him that made Darcy a bit cynical— she almost had a knee-jerk instinct to reject a person who was supposed to be so broadly appealing. But the man who approached them didn’t seem like the assertive hero she’d seen in uniform on the news: he carried himself with a certain reserve, not quite holding her eyes as he neared them, and certainly not using his body to announce himself as she’d seen so many bodybuilder-types do. He was wearing tan khakis and a plain white T-shirt and white tennis shoes. If he weren’t so handsome he’d have looked like a dork. Instead, he just looked clean and fresh and fit.

Rogers put down the duffel bags and they shook hands. It felt professional, like she was meeting a politician, and Darcy realized that he’d probably had to shake a lot of hands since he came out of the ice. His eyes were very blue.

“Nice to meet you, Darcy,” he said. “Tony told us that you work for Dr. Foster. I’ve seen her, over at the Tower— she’s something.”

“That she is,” said Darcy, finally finding her voice. “Pleasure to meet you, Cap. Is it okay I call you Cap? I mean, we only just met so, maybe it’s weird—”

“Please, call me Steve,” he said, interrupting before she could make a fool of herself.

“Okay, Steve,” she said, smiling. She was full of questions, none of which seemed appropriate right after meeting someone, like, _hey how likely is it that your ex-assassin friend will murder me during the night_? Instead, trying to sound relaxed, she asked, “What happened to Sergeant Barnes? That’s who the other guy was, right?”

His chest deflated a little, as though he were releasing some kind of tension balloon. “Yeah. He, uh… he just needed some space. Thanks— thank you for using his, uh… his real name. Is it okay if he walks around the property?”

“Sure,” she said. “We don’t have attack dogs or anything. Or bees. Or the dogs with bees in their mouths and when they bark, they shoot bees at you.”

Sam got the reference and laughed, but Steve just looked confused, and she felt bad. He probably didn’t even know about The Simpsons. Maybe he thought Tony really did have some kind of robot bee-shooting dogs guarding the property.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Probably not the right time to be making jokes.”

Sam just laughed like he was delighted by her. “Hey—don’t apologize for a little levity. I’ve been stuck in that car with two stanky old guys with no social skills for four hours— you’re like a balm for the wretched.”

Steve made a face of mock-outrage. “Hey, I resent that. I don’t stink.”

Darcy grinned, relaxing a bit. These guys were all right. “You wanna come in? Or were you planning on standing out here all night?” Then she sobered, realizing maybe they needed to, for Barnes, and that she shouldn’t be making light of it. “Unless, uh… you need to wait, for, you know…” she trailed off, uncomfortable.

“Bucky’ll be fine,” said Steve, glancing to Sam, who nodded.

“Let’s just give him room to breathe,” said Sam. “Like I said, we’ve been stuck in that car for a while.”

“Oh— okay,” said Darcy, looking between the two men. She was certain there was some kind of conversation going on between them, unsaid. “Do you think he might be hungry when he comes in, or are you guys gonna hit the sack right away?” She was trying to sort out how concerned she needed to be. They seemed pretty relaxed, like there was nothing to worry about, but she knew it couldn’t be that easy, and she was frustrated that she didn’t know the protocol for hosting possibly unstable ex-Hydra assassins.

“We ate on the way,” said Sam, “but I could use a beer, if you got any. Barton told us to check out the import selection… unless… was that some kinda code?”

Darcy was leading them to the front entrance, and she turned her head back to answer him. “Well,” she said, “Clint wasn’t lying— Tony’s got a secret stash. We, ah, we weren’t exactly supposed to be drinking that stuff. That was just revenge for something personal.” She saw Sam raise his eyebrows in question, but she continued before he could ask for details. “But not to worry! We absolutely for sure can annihilate the normal, for-regular-peons beer supply if we so choose.”

“Is that what we are? Regular peons?” Sam was smiling.

“Mr. Stark’s words, not mine,” said Darcy. “You, sir, are not what I’d categorize as ‘regular.’”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” said Sam, waggling his eyebrows.

“Jeez, Sam,” said Steve. “We’re here ten minutes you’re already gettin’ into it with the ladies.”

“Hey, if it’s wrong to get into this lovely person here, then I don’t wanna be right.”

“Oh boy,” said Steve, but Darcy just giggled. She could feel that Sam was just having fun, and it was nice to chip away at some of her tension.

Sam leaned closer to Darcy as they walked, and teased, “Don’t let him fool you. That Steve Rogers is just as big a flirt as anyone. He just can’t help puttin’ on his Boy Scout act when he’s meetin’ someone the first time. Guy’s got layers.”

“You got that right.”

The voice that said it was deep and gravelly and new, and it stopped Darcy in her tracks. She whirled around, and realized that the Winter Soldier was only a few steps behind them. Somehow he’d caught up to the group and was practically within arm’s reach of her, without her hearing any sound of his approach. She actually stumbled, and one of her flip-flops came off in the gravel. She cursed, and shakily toed it back on, trying not to show how rattled she felt.

“Hey, it’s okay,” said Sam, close to her ear now. He gently gripped the back of her arm with his hand, grounding her. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, trying to laugh off her nerves, and when she glanced to the side, she could see that Barnes had turned away and stopped, letting the rest of them continue without him.

“We’ll see you inside,” said Steve, heading back to join Barnes. Sam moved his hand from Darcy’s arm to touch the small of her back, which encouraged her to keep moving. She wanted to look back and see where the other two men were, but she tried to trust Sam’s cues and kept moving, looking ahead. She could hear Steve talking to Barnes in a low voice, some distance behind them.

When they got to the front door, Darcy held it open for Sam as he stepped inside. “Kitchen’s this way,” she said, taking the lead once again. “Let’s grab some beers.” Her words felt stiff and artificial, like she was trying to erase the awkwardness of the situation... and failing.

She could feel threads of guilt forming inside, as she thought about the way she’d so visibly startled when Barnes had spoken up. He’d surprised her, was all— but now that she was replaying the scene in her head, she realized that he’d probably been trying to re-normalize himself into the group, and her reaction had totally punished him for it.

They’d made it to the spacious combination kitchen-and-dining room, the working side dominated by a large stone-topped island with backless barstools.

“Look,” she said, turning to talk to Sam, who was setting down his duffel bag. “I’m feeling really gross about what just happened, but I need to know what’s going on.” She grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge and handed one to Sam, dropping her voice to a near-whisper, “Um, he can’t hear us right now, can he?”

Sam’s voice was steady, reassuring. “Hey, no. You’re fine. Do you want to sit? Let’s sit.” He pulled out a barstool and gestured to Darcy to take it. When she did, he pulled one out for himself and took a seat, setting the beer down on the countertop.

“If it’d been up to me, you’d have been fully briefed on this situation,” he said, right away. “But it wasn’t up to me.”

She wanted to break in, start asking questions right away, but she forced herself to be patient, and hear the man out. “Okay.”

“I’ll be totally honest with you.” He paused a moment, as though looking for the right words. “We don’t entirely know what we’re doing yet, but we needed a safe place, a private place, to figure some stuff out and help Steve’s friend out there.”

The way he said it— “ _Steve’s friend_ ” — she didn’t know if it was a calculated move on his part, but it sounded so much more reasonable that way. He wasn’t a killer, an assassin, a possibly mentally-unhinged former weapon of Hydra… he was _Steve’s friend_. Who needed help.

Sam was watching her, keeping his eyes on hers. “If you don’t feel safe here, that is totally understandable, and you can leave any time you want.” He took a sip of his of beer and then said, “Well, probably not tonight, but. I could take you to the Tower first thing in the morning, if you want to get out of here, or you could get a ride with Barton— he’ll be back again in a couple days.”

She took a drink of her own beer and picked at the cuticle on her thumb, unsure what to say. She didn’t have enough information to make any kind of decision, either way.

“In any case,” Sam continued, “I completely understand why you’d be … apprehensive.” He seemed to be choosing his words carefully.

“I feel like I’ve already done something wrong,” said Darcy. “And I mean, I don’t even know what’s going on— what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m not saying I want to leave, necessarily, but I feel like I’m totally unprepared for this.”

“I get it,” said Sam. “And you’ve got nothin’ to feel bad for. What you were feeling out there? Outside? That wasn’t wrong. It was smart.”

Darcy looked down at her hands, resting on the countertop, picked at her thumb again. “I mean, this is just a stupid job. I don’t need to be here. Jane’s not here right now; _you_ guys sure don’t need me… I guess I just don’t understand why I’d stay, when…” She trailed off, not wanting to say anything hurtful, even if the man wasn’t nearby.

“When there’s an ex-Hydra assassin moving in?”

“Well, yeah.” She half-chuckled nervously. When he said it straight like that, it didn’t seem cruel or personal— it was just the facts. “I mean, you guys seem okay around him, so that tells me something, but I’m not a frickin’ superhero with muscles on my muscles like you guys…”

Sam leaned forward, elbows on the counter, and laced his fingers together, like someone preparing to say grace. “Look, we’re the problem; not you. We didn’t have anywhere else safe to go on such short notice... couldn’t take him to the upstate HQ— too many eyes there. We sorta need to be here right now, ‘least for a little while, but we don’t want to mess up your business. Your job’s not going away, we’re not taking over the place, nothin’ like that. Whatever you want to do, we’ll accommodate that.”

She looked around, still worried that Barnes could hear her somehow. He was so sneaky before, she felt like he could be listening right outside the door and she’d never know. She dropped her voice a little. “Is he— I mean, how stable is he?”

Sam had been business-like in the conversation thus far, but at her question he seemed to sag a little, let more of his humanity show through. “I’m guessing you know a little bit about him, right? His history?” Darcy nodded, and he sighed, and continued. “For a guy who was a prisoner for seventy years, maybe awake for a handful of those, I’d say he’s doin’ all right. He’s been livin’ on the streets for almost three years, far as we can tell. Been out of their control all that time, found a way to keep going, so that says a lot. The fact he contacted Steve— when he didn’t have to— even more so.”

“That’s not the Winter Soldier out there,” he said. “I fought him; I should know.” He paused and took another drink of beer. “Don’t know if that’s James Barnes out there, either, but the man deserves a chance to find out.”

Darcy looked down again and tried to organize her thoughts, but there were too many unknowns. Her conscious thoughts were screaming, _are you a fucking idiot? Get out while you can!_ But there was this other part of her that she hadn’t fully processed yet, that kept seeing the black-and-white photo of Sergeant Barnes from her history book.

She hadn’t even seen his face yet. When he’d come up behind them on the path, she’d only gotten the faintest glimpse of the long hair, the shadowed jawline— just flickers of an impression— before her physical response had taken over and she’d all but panicked. She had to admit it to herself: in spite of the violent parts of his history, she was curious. Stupid, maybe— but curious.

Sam had been watching her quietly the whole time, and now he spoke up. “Can I say something to you?”

“Um, sure?”

“I know I’ve only known you for, what— fifteen? Twenty minutes? But I know people. It’s my job to know people. And everything I’ve seen, heard so far from you?” As he said it, he drew a circle in the air between them, where his view of Darcy was in the center of the circle. “Tells me you got good instincts. You can trust them.”

She looked him in the eye, thought about what she really wanted to know. She gave it some weight. “Am I safe?”

Sam didn’t answer right away, but he held her eyes when he spoke. “Yes,” he said. After a pause, he said, “We’ll make sure of it.”

Darcy held his gaze for a few more beats, measuring him, finding only honest intentions in what she could see, but she wasn’t completely naive. She knew there were things going on that she wasn’t being told, nor should she expect to be. She also wasn’t stupid enough to think anyone could actually guarantee her safety, with or without someone like the Winter Soldier hanging around— she’d learned that years ago; it was just part of working with people like this. But she found that she trusted Sam, and she decided to take his advice and trust her own instincts. The question was, which ones?

She pressed her lips together once and then relaxed them, puffing out the breath she’d been holding. She looked at Sam and he nodded to her, as though to say, “ _It’s all right— you can say it; you can walk away_.” She found herself nodding back, and then she gave him her answer:

“Okay then. I’m staying.”

<<>>

Darcy heard the single-note chime for someone opening an exterior door, and shortly afterwards, Steve Rogers came through the doorway into the kitchen alone. He noted their beers and said, “There more of those in the fridge?”

“Yup,” said Darcy. “Help yourself.” She watched him get a beer and twist off the cap, but he just stood there, didn’t take a drink. His crystal-blue eyes were far away, and she could see it now— beneath his glowing exterior, the man was exhausted. “Is he gonna be okay?” she asked. “I’m sorry if I messed up, made him feel weird. He just startled me, is all.”

Steve exhaled and set his beer down on the counter. “It’s okay,” he said. He was staring at the bottle, avoiding eye contact. “You didn’t do anything wrong. He, uh… he’s pretty twitchy like that, all the time. Nothing personal.”

Darcy was still trying to get used to the fact that Captain America was nothing like his public personality— he was so quiet, almost shy. It was hard to imagine him leading a team into battle, or defending himself against the Winter Soldier like in the footage she’d seen. His body was obviously built for the job, but the waves of sadness he was giving off just made her want to squeeze him or feed him cookies or something.

“Should I show you guys around?” she asked. “You can put your stuff in your rooms, take a look at the common areas…”

“Yeah, that’d be good,” said Steve. “It’s been a long day.”

Sam finished off his beer and stood up from the island, stretching his arms and fighting a yawn. “I can take first watch,” he said to Steve. To Darcy, he said, “I assume this place has got a security room? Cameras and stuff?”

“Yeah,” said Darcy. “It’s small, but it does the job. Come on, I’ll show you.”

<<>>

The room was very crowded with three people in it, especially when two of those people were big, muscly men, but they managed to maneuver around each other as Darcy showed them the basics.

“What’s _EVIL_?” asked Sam, pointing to the duct tape. “That your handiwork?”

“It is indeed,” said Darcy. “That’s the shutoff button for an alarm that is, on the ten-point scale of motherfucking awful atrocities to the human ear— ” She paused dramatically. “A solid twelve.” She grimaced and added, “Sorry for the F-bomb, Cap— I mean, Steve.”

Steve let his head sag in dramatic exasperation, and said, “You don’t need to apologize for cursing, Darcy. I was in the Army, you know.”

Darcy grinned. “A-oh-fuckin’ K, then,” she said, making Sam laugh. “Anyway, yeah— that’s, according to Tony, the ‘oh shit’ alarm that means we’ve got unwelcome visitors.”

“That happen often?” asked Steve, concerned.

“God, no,” she said. “First time I heard it was today, when Mr. Stark set it off on purpose before Barton showed up. Between all of that, and you guys showing up, today has easily been the most excitement we’ve ever had around here.”

“I’m sorry,” said Steve, acknowledging that their presence was a disruption. He really did sound sorry, and she instinctively reached out and squeezed his arm as if to say _it’s okay_ , and then her eyes widened and she squeezed his bicep again.

“Holy shit,” she said. “Those are some serious guns.”

Steve chuckled awkwardly and his cheeks got a little pink. Jesus Christ, he was adorable.

“What about _Quaker_?” said Sam, pointing to another button.

“Oh, that’s one of the few I actually figured out,” she said, letting go of Steve’s arm.

“Well, what is it?” pressed Sam.

“Quaker State? Pennsylvania. It’s the P.A. system.”

Steve chuckled, while Sam shook his head and said, “I can’t tell if that’s funny, or just plain stupid.”

“Can you see the whole property with these?” asked Steve, pointing to the security screens.

“Yeah. There’s three views for each one; you just turn this dial here to select, and then you can zoom in with this.” She showed them how it worked, and the two men leaned over and worked the screens until they found what they were looking for: Sergeant Barnes, far out on the western edge of the property. He was making his way slowly around the outer edge of the main walled-in area. Every now and then he’d stop and lean against the wall, like he needed a break.

Darcy bent over to take a closer look: on the screen, he didn’t look like a scary assassin— if you ignored the prosthesis, he was just a tired man in a T-shirt and sweat-pants, taking a walk. She still couldn’t get a look at his face; his long hair did a good job of hiding it.

“What’s he doing?” asked Darcy.

“Perimeter,” said Sam.

“Huh?”

“He’s checking the property,” said Steve. “Perimeter check. He, uh, he likes to know the environment he’s in: the layout, all the exits.”

“He’s fine,” said Sam, more to Steve than to Darcy.

“He doesn’t look fine,” said Darcy, watching as he leaned over double— if she didn’t know better, she would think he was throwing up. He steadied himself against the wall with the metal hand and then backed up and sat down heavily in the grass. She felt guilty, like they were spying on him in a vulnerable moment; she shifted and turned away from the screen.

“I just wish I could do something,” said Steve.

“You are doing something,” said Sam. “You went to him when he called. Brought him in safe. Moved him here when things got bad.”

“I know, but—”

“But nothin’,” interrupted Sam. “You gotta let him do the work, man.”

Darcy cleared her throat. She felt like she shouldn’t be a part of this conversation, and it was making her more uncomfortable. “You wanna see the gym?” she asked, hoping for an exit.

“We can leave that until tomorrow,” said Steve, polite as always, but he was obviously weary. He took a last look at the screen— Barnes was still in the same position on the grass— and said, “Let’s, uh… let’s see where we’re gonna bunk.”

Sam clapped a strong hand on the back of the other man’s shoulder as they shuffled out of the room. “You’re a good friend, Steve, and he knows that. That’s why he called you, and not some other guy.”

“Maybe I’m just the only person he knew wouldn’t try to lock him up,” said Steve.

<<>>

Darcy showed the guys where the living quarters were, upstairs, and they picked out a couple of rooms next door to each other. Sam dropped off his duffel bag and left to go check on Barnes, who was still outside.

“Doesn’t, um… does Sergeant Barnes need his own room?” asked Darcy, hovering in Steve’s doorway as he set down the other two bags.

“No,” said Steve. “He mostly sleeps on the floor. He’s fine in here with me, for now. I sorta want to keep an eye on him.”

“Okay,” she said. “Whatever you need. I’m just down the hall, if you, uh…” she trailed off, and he looked at her questioningly.

She chuckled and said, “I was just gonna say, if you need any help, but then I realized there’s probably nothing I could help you with that you can’t do better yourself, so… yeah.”

Steve had been rummaging through one of the bags, but he stopped, put a hand on his hip. There was a little dent between his eyebrows. “Hey, I… want to thank you for taking us in like this. I know it was a surprise for you, and, well… with Bucky’s history… a lot of people wouldn’t be so understanding. Barton called us on the road tonight, said you were a real laid-back gal, that it wasn’t gonna be a problem, but…” He shifted and put his hand down. “Anyway, thanks, Darcy. It means a lot to me.”

She almost blushed— she honestly wasn’t used to people being so polite to her, or grateful to her for anything other than making coffee. It was an unusual feeling and she didn’t really know what to do with it.

“No biggie,” she wound up saying. “If you guys get hungry in the night, there’s packaged stuff in the cupboards, TV dinners in the freezer. Help yourself to whatever.” She had the impression that he and Sam were going to be up all night, taking turns watching Barnes.

“Oh hey—” he said, just as she was turning to leave. He rubbed the back of his neck, a nervous gesture. “If you, uh… hear some screaming or shouting in the night… don’t be alarmed. Bucky… well, he’s been havin’ some nightmares…”

“Oh,” she said, blinking, not really sure what else to say. “That sucks. For him, I mean. Thanks for the heads up.” He nodded, and she said, “Okay, g’night then,” and left him to unpack.

It was late. She went to her own room, brushed her teeth and changed into some sleep shorts and a loose knit shirt, and crawled into bed with her phone, taking a few minutes to scroll through messages and emails before plugging it into the charger on her bedside table. She was dying to talk to Jane, but based on the way Tony and Barton had acted, she’d surmised the situation here was pretty hush-hush. She wasn’t going to make any assumptions about what she could say, or to whom. She could find out the exact rules in the morning.

She was still lying there awake a half-hour later, when she heard the door chime and then the sound of the front door shutting downstairs. Then there were footfalls— more than one pair— coming up the stairs and going past her closed door, down to the other end of the hall, to the guys’ rooms. She heard the low rumble of Sam’s voice saying something, and then a door opened and Steve’s voice said something as well. There was a pause and then she heard both bedroom doors shut, one after the other.

Darcy lay there in the dark, eyes wide open, for another five minutes, and then got up, quietly padded across the room, and enabled the electronic lock on her door.


	3. Chapter 3

She didn’t sleep well. She tossed and turned, waking every now and then to sit up, listening intently in the stillness of the dark, sure she’d woken to noises, but there was nothing there. She felt like she was braced for something, waiting. Some time after dawn, she heard a door open and shut down the hallway, and one set of feet went past her door and down the stairs. It could be any one of the men.

They should have discussed this before bed, she realized. Should have at least exchanged numbers so they could text— if Barnes was wandering around alone she guessed Steve and Sam would want to know about it. She doubted it was him, though— the footfalls had sounded polite, not wanting to wake anyone. It was probably just Steve, doing something disgustingly healthy, like getting up extra early to jog.

She waited another twenty minutes to see if anyone else was going to get up, but it was completely silent and still. Finally she shoved the covers down with her feet, sat up and unplugged her phone from the charger, and threw on her robe. She disabled the electronic lock on her door and cracked it open, pausing to listen again, but the building was completely silent, other than the low hum of the air conditioner going through its cycles.

She eased out of her room, looking down the hallway: both of the guys’ doors were shut. She crept down the modern floating stairway, tightening the sash on her robe, and turned left at the bottom, heading past the front entryway and around the corner to the hallway that led to the kitchen, workroom, and security. She poked her head into the kitchen: empty. One door down to the security room: also empty, but she took a minute to check the CCTV screens, even though there’d been no chime for anyone leaving the building. Across the hall to the workroom, which was still the disaster that Jane had left it a week ago: nobody.

The only place left was the gym, and she was heading back that way, when she rounded the corner by the front entrance and almost walked smack into a six-foot-tall wall of human being with shoulder-length dark hair and a shiny metal arm. Darcy screamed and leapt backward as though she’d stepped into a pool of lava.

“Jesus _fuck_!”

It came out like a yelp, undignified, and she pulled her robe even tighter around herself as she tried to recover. She was so flustered that she reacted on autopilot, and spoke to him like he was just some ordinary guy. “Dude, don’t scare a girl like that!”

She’d avoided looking at him directly as she regained her composure, but now, as she allowed her eyes to cautiously move over him, she saw that he was locked in place, as though their collision had cast a spell on him. His flesh hand was suspended in air, palm out— whether to fend her off or calm her was unclear— but she realized that it was trembling faintly. It wouldn’t have been noticeable if he hadn’t been so completely frozen otherwise: it was the only part of him that was moving, other than the slight rise and fall of his chest.

He was close enough that she could smell him— a musky, undeniably male scent, probably unwashed from the night before. His eyes were averted, as though it were painful for him to look at her, which was… unnerving. She had no idea how to interpret his behavior, or whether she should be frightened, but as she assessed his demeanor further, she realized that if anyone was truly rattled, it was him… which made no sense at all.

“Hey,” she said, softly, and started to reach out in a placating gesture, but when she saw him flinch minutely at her movement, she pulled back immediately. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to freak out. I’m just really easy to scare, and you’re so quiet. It’s not your fault.”

He was still silent, unmoving, so she kept talking, filling up the space. “People think it’s funny to sneak up on me and scare me on purpose, just to hear me scream like that. People are assholes.” She winced and clarified, “Not that I’m saying you’re an asshole. I know you didn’t do it on purpose.” She backed away, carefully, a couple of steps, bumping into the wall.

He’d slowly lowered his flesh hand and turned his head back toward her a little, and she saw his eyes flick up to hers once and then away, and then back again, taking a moment to map her face.

It was hard not to suck in her breath in surprise as she finally got a decent look at him. Though his long hair changed his overall vibe considerably, there was no denying it was really him— James Buchanan Barnes, the handsome G.I. from her history book. Not that she’d doubted it, but she hadn’t been prepared for how it would feel to see him right there, in the flesh, just a couple of feet away.

She knew those eyes, having stared at his photo long enough, but she’d never known they were a soft blue— more grey than her own— or how it would feel to have them pointed at her… no mischief in them now, they were quietly assessing, nervous… complicated…

He looked like he could stand to put on a few pounds, his cheekbones cutting sharp lines into his face, but it hardly changed how objectively attractive the man was. His hair curved down to brush the strong line of his jaw, which showed a couple days’ worth of stubble, darkening in the cleft of his chin, and she got a weird, sudden urge to tuck his hair back away from his face, run her fingers against the scruff...

She abruptly realized she was staring. _Say something_. She seemed to be stuck against the wall, nowhere to go as long as he was standing there, frozen, so she figured she might as well introduce herself. She instinctively held out her hand, and then quickly retracted it, remembering how he’d flinched before. Her eyes were drawn to the prosthesis, which was visible up to the bicep in his loose black T-shirt. His eyes caught the look, and he subtly shifted his body to angle it away from her view.

God, she was fucking this up.

There were heavy footsteps coming down the stairs, and much to her relief, Steve appeared in the hallway behind Barnes a moment later. “Everything okay?” he said. “I thought I heard a scream…”

“It’s nothing,” she said quickly, relaxing significantly now that Steve was there. “Just me being stupid. I heard someone come downstairs, so I came down to see who was up. I just got startled coming around the corner. I’m a total loser. I’d fail spy camp on the first day. First hour even.”

Barnes’ face was still angled slightly away from her, but she saw his eyes move to her again, taking a longer look this time, like he was trying to figure out what she was.

Steve squeezed himself around his friend so that he could see Darcy, apparently wanting a visual confirmation that everything was okay. She felt monumentally stupid, standing there in her short bathrobe and no doubt spectacular bed-head, with two extremely attractive super-soldiers sizing her up, but Steve just went ahead and introduced her, like this was all completely normal.

“Bucky, this is Darcy,” he said, and she felt sick, realizing that this was going to be the first impression forever— that she’d never get a do-over meeting Bucky Barnes for the first time. “She works for Dr. Foster and takes care of the place.”

She snorted automatically at that. “I guess that’s sort of true,” she said, “if by ‘taking care of the place’ you mean falling asleep on the security console at least once a day.”

She turned her attention fully to Barnes, then— again resisting the urge to offer her hand. “Hey, Bucky,” she said. “It’s nice to finally meet you. I mean, officially.” Not being able to shake hands, to her horror she found herself leaning over in some kind of weird bow, like a pirate— something she'd never done before, and hoped to never do again. Maybe the floor would swallow her up and put her out of her misery.

He still held his body shifted away from her, and he took a breath, his lips parted slightly, before looking away again, which seemed to be as much acknowledgment as she was going to get. He was bleeding discomfort.

“Well…” she said, wanting to escape the awkwardness as soon as possible, “I think I’m gonna go take a shower, and then I’ll make some coffee, if anyone else wants some.”

“Doesn’t do much for us anymore, I’m afraid,” said Steve.

“Huh,” said Darcy. “That’s a fucking tragedy. You sure the serum was worth it, Steve?” She saw Barnes’ eyes move to her again, and if she wasn’t mistaken, there was just a hint of amusement in them this time. She was probably just imagining things.

“So, um…” she made an aborted move forward, needing to get by them, but there wasn’t enough room to squeeze through without giving at least one of them a close-encounter with her boobs.

Barnes was holding himself very still, which should have been comforting, but actually had the opposite effect on her— like coming upon a wild animal, frozen and ready to spring, it made all of her own movements feel magnified, significant… like she was being analyzed and tracked.

Steve finally realized that she wanted to get by, and said, “Oh jeez, sorry,” and turned his body sideways, crowding into Barnes to make room. With Steve acting as a buffer, she managed to get past the two of them, and then turned back once she was safely by the stairs.

“We’ve got fake Pop Tarts in the kitchen, if you’re so inclined,” she said, going for a casualness she wasn’t feeling. Her heart was pounding— a delayed response to being so close to Barnes. “They’re not as good as the real ones, but they’re a tolerable placebo.”

“Thanks, Darcy,” said Steve. Barnes was still frozen, silent. As she headed up the stairs, she could hear Steve speaking to him quietly. As soon as she got to her room, she shut the door behind her, leaning on it, and then blew out a breath and enabled the electronic lock again. She wasn’t sure she could do this.

It didn’t help that she’d realized her jello legs weren’t just because of the jump-scare. Nope. It was pretty obvious: Sergeant Barnes, in spite of his weird behavior and scary history, was unbearably, unfairly, and undeniably _hot_.

<<>>

She felt a lot better after the shower: clean and fresh and with real clothes on. Normal-looking hair. Ready to talk, listen, and make clear-headed decisions. This time, when she poked her head out of her door, she could hear people talking distantly downstairs, which made it feel safe to descend.

Sam and Steve were in the kitchen, rummaging through the cupboards and the fridge. She realized that if the three men were going to be staying for more than a couple of days, they were going to have to drastically increase their food stores. Barton’s shipment had included stuff to make sandwiches, but she didn’t think it’d last very long.

“G’morning,” she said. And then to Steve, “Again.”

“Hey,” said Sam. He was pouring out a huge bowl of organic blueberry mini-wheats, which he proceeded to eat like snack food— dry, with his fingers. Darcy had noticed over the years that cereal was like Boy Chow. Guys could practically live on it, in the absence of other options. He swallowed a bite and said, “I heard you ran into our friend earlier this morning. Literally.”

“Yeah,” she said, moving around him to grab the bag of coffee beans. “I think we scared the shit out of each other. Like, it was mutual. Where is he now, anyway?”

“He’s sleeping again.” said Steve. “I mean, he doesn’t really sleep much. But he lies down and shuts his eyes.”

“Like he’s meditating or something?” She measured out an appropriate amount of roasted coffee beans into the obnoxious commercial-grade coffee-grinder on the counter, and flipped the toggle switch, filling the kitchen with a sound like an airplane making love to a gas-powered saw. Within seconds, her face was hit with the earthy aroma of freshly-ground coffee. When the batch was done grinding, she switched the machine off, and inhaled deeply at the mouth of the collecting jar, like the shameless addict she was.

Steve had waited until the grinder was off to answer. “Not sure. Maybe. I think he’s trying to sleep, but just… can’t.”

“That’s gotta get old real fast,” she said. She poured the ground coffee into Tony’s fancy-ass coffeemaker, filled it with filtered water from the fridge, and started the program for an immediate brew.

“You still set on sticking around?” asked Sam. “I got some time today, so I could drive you back to the city, while Steve stays here with Barnes.”

“You trying to get rid of me?” she joked.

“Naw,” he said. “Just want you to know you got options.”

“I’ve got questions,” she said.

“Shoot,” said Sam, popping a couple more pieces of cereal into his mouth. Steve, unwilling to eat any of the artificially-colored breakfast items, had been delighted to find a can of non-GMO steel-cut Irish oatmeal in the cupboard, and was cooking some in a pan. He turned a little to listen to Darcy while he monitored the oats, stirring them occasionally with a wooden spoon.

“Can I call Jane?” she asked. “What all am I allowed to say? She’s got higher clearance than me, for sure, but… obviously I don’t want to go blabbing stuff when I shouldn’t be. But… I mean, she’s supposed to be coming back here soon, right? I think she should know what the situation is now. And knowing whether or not she’s coming back sort of factors into my thinking.”

Sam looked to Steve, who said, “Yeah, of course Dr. Foster should know the situation. I, uh… I’ll talk to Tony today, have him brief her. Just hang tight for another day or two before you talk to her, if you don’t hear from her first, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. “I think I can do that.”

“Anything else?” said Sam.

“Yeah,” she said. She’d pulled a clean mug out of the cupboard, and she looked down into it, even though it was still empty. “This morning. I mean, I kind of joked about it, but to be honest… it sort of freaked me out.”

“I kind of figured,” said Steve. “But if it’s any consolation, I think Bucky was more shaken up than you were.”

“That’s just it, though,” she said. “For a second there… I mean, if he got startled bad enough, he could hurt someone in the blink of an eye. Like, before he even had a chance to think it through. I mean, that's why he was freaked out, right? I mean, it was either that, or my bed-head's scarier than I thought."

Sam indulged her joke with a little smile, but she continued on, serious again. "And, like, one of you guys, you could stand up again if he knocked you down… but me? I don’t know.”

Sam was nodding. “It’s a risk,” he said, but Steve interrupted him before he could elaborate.

“I disagree,” he said. “When I went and got him, one of the first things he told me was that he didn’t want to hurt people anymore. That he doesn’t _do_ that anymore. Could he hurt you by accident? Sure. But I don’t think you need to fear that any more than you gotta be afraid of me or Sam or any other guy who’s bigger and stronger than you being able to hurt you accidentally.”

Sam was giving Steve a look, and Steve said, “What? I believe that.”

“Seriously?” said Sam. He put down his cereal bowl. “You’re sayin’ that Barnes— seventy years of captivity, fucked up memory, trained by Hydra, cybernetic arm— that he’s no more dangerous to her than—” He shook his head. “Jesus, Rogers.”

“Well that cleared up a whole lot of nothing,” said Darcy.

Sam had his arms crossed over his chest. “She’s got a good point, Steve. She’s not you—she’s not gonna bounce back from a reflexive choke-hold, or… God forbid, one punch from that fist—”

“Okay, okay,” said Steve, clearly upset, but not bothering to disagree. He turned back to his oatmeal, but Sam pressed the point.

“The fact that he left the room on his own this morning, without you waking up, and then he runs into Darcy, with neither one of us there…”

“To be fair, that was pretty dumb of me,” she said. “I shouldn’t have gone tip-toeing around, not knowing which one of you it was…”

Steve’s head was bowed over his oatmeal pan. “He doesn’t want to hurt anyone.”

Sam just said, “I don’t like it. Barton should’ve taken her when he was here, even if she’d have been stuck at HQ for a few days…”

“Well, what do you propose we do?” said Steve, a bit testy. “Kick her out? Tell her she has to leave? Or maybe we should find another place…”

“Maybe we could rig something up with one of the other guest rooms,” said Sam. “So we’d know when he’s coming and going, wake us up…”

“I don’t want him to feel like a prisoner,” said Steve.

“What about the safe room?” said Darcy.

“What’s the safe room?” asked Sam. Steve turned around again, wooden spoon in his hand.

“I didn’t get a chance to show it to you last night,” she said. “It’s one of Dr. Banner’s rooms. There’s an access hallway to it, off the gym.”

“You mean like the safe room at the Tower?” asked Steve.

“I don’t know,” said Darcy. “I’ve never been to the Tower. The one here, as far as I know, it’s designed like the other ones… so Dr. Banner could be… safe— for everyone else— if he Hulked out. It’s actually really nice. I read in there sometimes. It’s quiet.”

Instead of responding to her, Steve slowly swiveled in the other direction, facing the doorway, still holding the spoon, and said, “Hey, Buck.”

Darcy straightened up from where she was leaning against the counter, and looked over: Barnes was standing there in the doorway to the kitchen, like an apparition. He still hadn’t changed out of the black shirt and grey sweatpants he’d been wearing since they’d arrived the night before. He looked tired, his eyes gazing at nothing, somewhere to the side and a little downward. She wondered how long he’d been there, how much he’d heard.

“I could smell the coffee,” he said. It was startling to hear him speak; she wasn’t expecting it. His voice was soft and a bit rumbly, like he needed to clear his throat. In spite of his disheveled and fatigued appearance, he still looked unfairly beautiful, and Darcy tried to avoid looking directly at him. She had a way of turning into a babbling mess of idiotic goo around people she found attractive.

“It’s almost ready,” she said, automatically. “You want a cup?”

He did clear his throat then. “Yeah,” he said, and stepped into the room.

“I just assumed you didn’t drink it anymore,” said Steve. “It doesn’t work on me, so I never thought to ask if you wanted any…”

“It don’t,” said Barnes. He quietly approached the island, looked at the barstools like he was analyzing their function. He pulled one out and sat down, moving slowly. “Doesn’t work,” he clarified, and then cleared his throat again. “Still like it, anyhow. Smells good. Tastes good.”

“You shoulda said something,” said Steve. “I woulda been happy to make you some.”

“I remember your field coffee,” said Barnes. “It stinks.”

Sam barked out a laugh and held out his fist to Barnes to bump it, but Barnes just looked at it in confusion until Sam lowered it again.

The coffeemaker beeped and then hissed, signaling the end of the brew cycle. Darcy pretended not to notice the way the beep had made Barnes flinch. “You want some Sam?” she said.

“No thanks,” he said. “Stuff makes me edgy. Last thing I need.”

“More for me and Barnes, then,” she said, and pulled down another mug from the cupboard. She poured the two cups, and delivered one of them to the island, the steam rising visibly from the surface. “Here you go, Sarge.”

“Bucky,” he said, and leaned over the mug, missing the significant look that Sam shot over to Steve.

Darcy watched, mesmerized, ignoring her earlier resolve not to look too closely at him. His eyes had fallen shut while he inhaled deeply, echoing her own response to the coffee grounds earlier. It did something funny to her insides. It was also such a normal, human thing to do, that she felt some of her tension about him ease back. The Winter Soldier wouldn’t enjoy a hot cup of coffee, but Bucky Barnes sure seemed to.

“Bucky,” she affirmed, and then shook herself— she’d been staring again. “Shit, I forgot to ask if you needed room for cream and sugar.”

He opened his eyes. “Naw. S’good like this.”

She couldn’t help the little smile that broke on her face, and she hid it as she turned back to her own mug.

Steve was still stirring his oatmeal, and Sam, looking over his shoulder, made a face. “I don’t even want to say what that looks like, man.”

“At least it’s real,” said Steve. “Cereal shouldn’t be blue.”

Darcy laughed. “If you’ve got a problem with mini-wheats, you don’t even wanna know what we’d be stocking if it were up to me,” she said.

They were all quiet a minute— eating, drinking, or stirring— and then Bucky broke the silence: “I want to see it.”

“Hm?” Steve looked up from the saucepan. “See what?”

“The safe room.”

Shit. Darcy’d been under the impression that they’d collectively and tacitly agreed to pretend that entire awkward scene hadn’t happened— that he hadn’t totally walked in on them discussing how dangerous he was, and where they should put him. Guess not.

“Darcy?” Steve looked to her for direction.

“Sure,” she said, smiling politely over her mug. “We can go check it out right after breakfast.”

<<>>

His body wasn’t moving, but Darcy could see that Bucky was scanning the gym methodically: the high-end treadmill and stationary bike, stacked-weight machines, and racks of dumbbells; the wall of sliding glass doors that looked out on the pool and patio; even the ceilings, with their hidden speakers and high-tech security cameras. The rest of them stood there, letting him take his time.

“Is that it,” he said finally, his voice soft, nodding in the direction of a control panel on the wall opposite the sliding glass doors. It was next to the outline of a sealed, reinforced door.

“Yup,” said Darcy. She approached the panel and put in the code to unlock the first door. She could hear the men coming up behind to watch, Sam and Steve on her left, and, after a moment, she sensed movement behind her on her right as well, and knew that Bucky was there, close. She suddenly became aware of how small she was, compared to the men flanking her.

“Okay,” she said, focusing. “This is the master switch, and this opens the first door, after you put in your code.” She went through the sequence, and then buzzed them through the door, pushing it open until it locked in place, and then walked down a short, windowed corridor to the next door, which opened with a similar procedure, and then they entered the big room itself.

The room was enormous— it had to be, to accommodate the Hulk— and the shatter-proof windows along the wall shared by the corridor allowed people to see both in and out. The heavy door to the room had an auto-lock mechanism that could only be released from the outside— or remotely, through the master security system.

Darcy had pushed open the door and then, once they were all in, slid a piece of scrap wood between the door and the jamb to keep it ajar, explaining, “This one doesn't prop open like the first one. If I don’t do this, it’ll swing shut and lock us in; I did that once, and I was trapped in here for hours, ’til Jane woke up and let me out.” When Steve looked at her quizzically, she explained, “She had her noise-cancelling earplugs in, so she didn’t hear me buzzing her. She could sleep through the apocalypse.”

They were circling the room, looking up and around, taking in the enormity of the space. Bucky nodded to the row of large windows that looked out on the corridor, and cleared his throat. “Those really shatter-proof?”

“I guess,” she said. “I couldn’t really tell you what it’s made of. SHIELD developed it, I think, before they brought Dr. Banner in the first time, and then he and Stark improved it. All the walls are, too, and the doors. I dunno, like space-ship grade stuff or something? All of his safe-rooms are. Dude, if the Hulk can’t smash through, sure as hell none of us can. I heard Thor busted out with his hammer when he was dropped from the Helicarrier inside of one, but just barely.”

“Well,” said Steve. “Now that I’m seein’ it, I get the appeal. I’ve seen Banner’s safe room at the Tower, but this is— this is nice. Less, uh… sterile.” He walked around, checking out the extra-large bed, the well-stocked bookshelves, the colorful Indian fabrics hanging on the walls, and the tall, large-leafed potted plants that Banner had found soothing. There was even an ensuite bathroom with a shower. As far as cages went, it was about as comfortable as you could get.

“But Buck,” said Steve, and he dropped his voice a little, “it’s all the way downstairs and separated from everyone else. What if you have a dream, or…”

“It’s fine,” he said.

“But it’d be like… like bein’ locked up. Like at the Tower.”

Darcy could see why Steve was against the arrangement— even with the effort to make it feel like a bedroom, there was an undeniable feeling of being in a well-decorated display cage, like a human lab animal.

Bucky disagreed. “It ain’t like the Tower,” he said. “No armed guards here, watchin’ my every move. Spyin’ on me.”

“Well…” said Darcy. “I can’t make any promises about the spying. Stark’s got cameras all over this place, apparently. In the common areas, at least. I’m not sure about in here— I’d have to ask— but I’m guessing they probably are.”

“I still think it’s a good compromise,” said Sam. “He can come and go when he wants, yeah?”

“Sure,” she said. “You just, uh, have to push this button here to let someone know you wanna come out. The security system will buzz us, even if we’re outside or something.”

“You sure you don’t mind?” asked Steve. “Havin’ to ask to be let out?”

“No,” said Bucky. He’d wandered over to the bookshelf, was scanning the titles on the spines, but now he turned to face them again. “Fact is, I prefer it.” He nodded to Darcy without looking at her. “She was right; I coulda hurt her this morning. It’d be better if there’re no more… surprises.”

Darcy wasn’t sure if she felt appreciative that he was considering her safety, or bad that she’d made him feel he was a danger to her. Maybe a little of both. “It wasn’t your fault, though,” she said. “I mean, I totally set myself up, creeping around like that. It was like one of those movies where someone’s sneaking around doorways and all of a sudden a cat jumps down out of nowhere and gives everyone a fucking heart attack. It could’ve been any of you guys, and I would’ve had the same reaction.”

He looked at her then. “Fault’s got nothin’ to do with it, if someone gets hurt.” He’d pulled a book off the shelf and was holding it in his flesh hand.

“It’s not like you have to make yourself a prisoner,” she said. “You can just prop the door open most of the time, and lock up at night, or whatever. Whatever you want to do.”

He still had his eyes on her, and he pinched his eyebrows together slightly, like she’d said something confusing.

“Okay, then,” she said, and turned to address the other guys. “I’ve got a little bit of work to do, so I’m gonna… go do that. You guys got plans for the day?”

“If you don’t need a ride, I’ve got some notes I could go over,” said Sam. “Thought I’d take over one of the empty rooms upstairs for an office, if that’s okay.”

“Sure, whatever you need,” said Darcy.

“I’m gonna get in a workout,” said Steve. “You wanna join me Buck?”

“Maybe later,” he said, turning back to the bookshelf.

“I’m definitely getting in the pool later, so y’all are welcome to join me,” said Darcy. “In fact, I strongly encourage it.” She wagged her eyebrows at Sam, making him chuckle, and then she looked at Bucky, considering. “Can you swim? Is it okay if the arm gets wet?”

He turned back around when he realized she was talking to him, and seemed to take a moment to remember what she’d asked. He glanced down at the prosthesis, and then back to her. “Water doesn’t damage it,” he said. “It’s heavy, though. Awkward under water.”

“Bummer,” she said. “Come and dunk your feet in at least. It’s almost necessary, when it’s super hot and gross out in the afternoon. Even if you just sit there and drink a beer or whatever. I go a little crazy if I'm cooped up in the air conditioning all day.”

He didn’t respond, but Sam said, “Sounds good.” She sensed that the men maybe wanted to talk amongst themselves, so she made her exit. “Okay, then. I’ll be in the workroom for a while, if anyone needs anything. Help yourself to whatever in the kitchen.”

“Thanks, Darcy,” said Steve.

<<>>

Around lunchtime, having finished all of her work for the day, she shuffled down the hall to the kitchen to find Steve and Sam putting together an enormous tray of food.

“Hey, Darce,” said Steve, looking up from his station at the counter, where he was liberally painting slices of wheat bread with Hellman’s mayonnaise and yellow mustard. Sam was next to him, doing his own part in the assembly line.

“Want a sandwich?” asked Steve.

“Sure,” she said, pulling out a barstool at the island, and collapsing into it. She folded her forearms in front of her on the countertop and lay her head down into them, groaning.

“You okay?” He’d stopped what he was doing, to look at her in concern.

“Need more coffee,” she moaned, tilting her head to rest one side of it on her hands as she squinted up at him.

“If you show me how to use the machine, I’d be happy to make you some.”

“Nah,” she said, making a dramatic show of effort to first push her weary head up and then slide her body off the barstool. She trudged over to the line of hi-tech appliances on the main counter and got out the coffee beans again. “You’ll only mess it up. Tony’s machine isn’t for newbs. Thanks, though.”

“Newbs?” Steve repeated, and looked to Sam for assistance.

“Newb,” said Sam. He was putting large pieces of leaf lettuce on the top of the meat-tower on each sandwich. “N-E-W-B. Means someone who’s new to something. A beginner. Willing to learn, but still a goddamn nuisance in the wrong situation.” He finished with the lettuce and topped the stacks with their matching bread slices, and started to pile the completed sandwiches on a tray. “Not to be confused with ‘noob’, N-O-O-B. Fuck those assholes.”

Steve gave him a look, with raised eyebrows, and Sam said, “Aw, you know the type. Like one of those goddamn butter-bar lieutenants think they know everything.”

“Ah,” said Steve. “Well. Glad I’m in the first category then.” They’d finished assembling the tower of sandwiches, and Steve moved around Sam to put the mayo and mustard jars back into the fridge.

Within another few minutes, she had the coffeemaker filled and running and had already pulled out a fresh mug, and was tapping it impatiently on the counter, when she felt her phone vibrate in the pocket of her shorts. She pulled it out, and nearly dropped it when she saw the caller ID.

“Shit,” she said, almost tripping in her ungraceful clambering to get out of the room, “I gotta take this.” She hurried into the hallway, calling back, “Save me a sandwich,” as she punched the button to accept the incoming call, and pulled the phone up to her ear. “Janey!”

“Darcy! Omigosh, I’m so glad you picked up. Are you okay? What’s going on? Tony just briefed me on the situation over there. Please tell me you’re using extra security.”

“I’m fine,” Darcy said. “I mean, I did sleep with the electronic lock on for the first time ever, but otherwise everything’s pretty much the same. When are you coming back?”

“That’s part of why I called,” said Jane. “I needed to know what was going on, that you were safe— but also, that I’m not going back there, not while he’s there.”

“He, who?”

“You know who.”

“I don’t think—” She paused. “I’m not totally sure what to think yet, but… I mean, it’s not like he’s the guy we saw on those videos.”

“Oh, and you know this after what, twelve whole hours in? Darcy, don’t be stupid.”

“Give me a little credit, will you?” she snapped. “I’m not being stupid— there’s just… stuff you don’t know.” She dropped to a whisper. “ _Including the fact that he’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen, and I say that while I’m literally twenty feet away from Sam Wilson and Captain fucking America_.”

“You can’t be serious right now,” said Jane, incredulously, her voice loud enough that Darcy almost had to hold the phone away from her ear. “Hot? He’s _hot_?” Jane actually sounded pissed off, which was unsettling— Jane rarely got her blood up over people, and Darcy’d never had it directed toward her.

“Darcy, what is wrong with you? You know what I _do_ know? That he’s a trained killer, and that he’s very good at what he does. Like, scary good. Who gives a crap what he looks like?!” Jane’s voice was squeaking as she got more upset. “Why are you being like this? You’re smarter than this!”

Darcy could feel her face warming up as she took the sting of Jane’s words… she knew she wouldn’t be able to explain it to Jane, because she couldn’t even explain it to herself… and because she didn’t have any logical way to justify her instinct to stick around, she reflexively lashed out instead.

“Maybe I’m not,” she said, the words clipped, biting. “Not everyone can be a world-renowned astrophysicist, you know— building fricking space portals and consulting for Tony fucking Stark. Some of us are just idiots trying to get through life and not fuck up too much.”

Jane sighed. “I’m sorry,” she said, and Darcy knew that she meant it. But then: “Darcy, please, just consider this: would you be feeling the same way about being safe, if the guy _wasn’t_ hot?”

Darcy didn’t speak for a moment, and when she did, her voice was flat. “I’m hanging up now. I’m sorry. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Darcy wait—” she heard, before she clicked the red button to end the call. A few seconds later, the phone began vibrating again, and she immediately clicked to decline the call. It didn’t vibrate again.

Standing in the hallway, she let her hand holding the phone drop to her side, feeling shaky and raw. Fighting with Jane made her feel like shit. And the worst part was, she knew Jane was right.


	4. Chapter 4

After the unpleasant phone call with Jane, Darcy had composed herself long enough to grab a cup of coffee and one of the guys’ sandwiches to go, and ate it up in her room, wanting to avoid their questioning eyes. She had a lot to think about. It was clear Jane had no intention of returning to the Redoubt while Bucky was here… and that she thought Darcy was an idiot for staying one minute longer than necessary.

The more she thought about it, the more Darcy realized that Jane was being pretty darn hypocritical— Darcy had a pretty good memory of Jane driving off with Thor after only knowing the guy for a day, in defiance of Dr. Selvig’s warnings that he was dangerous… and what had been her justification? She'd gone with her instincts to help the guy because he was fascinating, mysterious, and— oh yeah, _hot_. And that had turned out just fine— Jane had only _almost_ died a few times… right?

Even Sam seemed to be mellowing out on the whole _Danger, Will Robinson_ routine, where Darcy was concerned, now that they’d set up the safe room. She’d also overheard him commenting to Steve that the little coffee-bonding moment at breakfast had been the most relaxed Sam had seen Bucky since he’d come in off the street.

These were the things she was telling herself as she finished her sandwich, half-heartedly trying to cheer herself up with videos of baby goats jumping around in pajamas. The problem was, even if she actually believed it all, she still felt like crap. She’d considered texting Jane to break the ice, but didn’t even know what to say, short of apologizing for not being as smart and objective as Jane wanted her to be.

“Fuck it,” she finally said, exiting YouTube and turning her phone face down on the bed. She went to her dresser, and pulled out the swimsuit she reserved for emergency situations: if being poolside with two— possibly three— very attractive men in peak physical condition wasn’t an emergency swimsuit situation, then she didn’t know what was.

Skirted suits weren’t her favorite, but this one was special: it was classy, exuding vintage Hollywood style. A black one-piece halter-top sheath, the skirted front lay tight across the fullest part of her hips, accentuating her hourglass figure, yet gave her just enough coverage to skip an expedition into her bush with a trimmer, while the sweetheart neckline pushed her boobs up, turning them into pillowy man-magnets. As she checked herself out in the mirror, she felt sexy, curvy and confident, and about one percent less shitty about fighting with Jane.

<<>>

Steve and Sam joined her about an hour later. She’d already gotten her fill of sun by then, and was stretched out on a chaise lounge under a large patio umbrella, watching, sleepy-eyed, as the men swam lazy laps around the pool.

Darcy might not have been wrong about Sam doing a thousand crunches a day, because it turned out he had magnificent abs— she’d probably spent just as much time sneaking peeks at his figure as he’d spent checking out hers in the curvy black suit. After a while, he’d pulled himself up onto a giant float shaped like a slice of pizza, complete with a head-rest crust, and drifted around, flat on his back, his eyes hidden behind stylish wraparound sunglasses. He may have actually fallen asleep.

Steve’s body, on the other hand, was so out of control that she almost felt embarrassed looking directly at him, like her eyes might melt out from staring directly at the sun.

“Hey, do you get sunburn?” she called out to him. She’d noticed he hadn’t bothered to put on any sunscreen, even though his skin was almost as pale as her own.

He had his well-muscled arms draped over a pink pool noodle, and he slowly floated his way over to the side closest to Darcy’s lounger. When he got to the side of the pool, he ditched the noodle, and anchored himself at the edge by resting his bent arms on the travertine coping. Little droplets of water clung to his eyelashes, and his hair— a darker honey-blond when wet— was slicked back from his face, which was flushed with a healthy glow. He looked like a goddammed magazine cover, come to life.

“Sure,” he said, grinning up at her. “Heals up fast, though.” He pushed himself fully out of the water then, effortlessly levering his body weight up and over with the strength of his arms. Darcy sat up and handed him a towel.

“Thanks,” he said, drying off his upper body and the back of his neck, and then spread the towel out on the lounger next to hers before reclining on it. While Darcy had positioned the umbrella to give herself some shade, Steve’s lounger was still in the full sun, and the beads of water on his skin glittered in it. He let out a contented sigh. “I’m starting to see why you weren’t in any hurry to leave,” he said.

“I wish your friend would come out,” she said. “But it sounds like water isn’t too much fun for him.”

“Well, I know he _can_ swim— he pulled me out of the water back in D.C.”

Darcy hummed in response and Steve continued. “You know, it might be more than metal and circuits in there. There could be some kind of synthetic muscle underneath part of it, that actually contracts when he moves.”

“Is that why it has bumps on it? Like, muscle bumps? Over the real—or synthetic, whatever— stuff? I mean, I’m guessing that it’s not just to look hot.”

Steve almost laughed at that, but then answered her question seriously. “Could be. There’s a lot we just don’t know. Tony wanted to do a whole bunch of detailed scans, see what was going on inside… but Bucky… well, it didn’t work out.”

Darcy flipped onto her side, so she could see him better. She wanted to ask what had happened back at the Tower, but she didn’t want to pry. It really wasn’t any of her business. It seemed like Steve needed to talk about it, though, because he continued on without any prompting from her.

“We’d had him there for about a week, getting some tests run, getting some better nutrition in him, that kind of thing. He spent a lot of time talking to Sam. You know Sam works over at the VA. Helps with guys who’ve got, uh… you know… we used to call it shell-shock when we were kids.”

“PTSD?” she said helpfully.

“Yeah,” said Steve. “But what Bucky’s gone through… it’s way out of his league— outa anyone’s league, I imagine. There’s no precedent for it. I’ll be honest; we really have no clue what to do. He needs professional help, but with SHIELD gone, and no way to take him through above-ground channels… I don’t know. It’s hard to know who to trust.”

“Anyway, Tony was real keen to get a look at the arm. It’s sorta why he allowed us to bring him there in the first place, I think. He was on the west coast until a couple days ago, and then he finally flew in, came over to the med wing to see him, and…”

“And?”

“I don’t know. Bucky, he… had some kind of episode. I don’t really know how to describe it. He was still there, breathing, his eyes were open, but… he could barely move, couldn’t talk… ”

“God, that must have been scary.”

“It was. We, uh... we weren't even sure what we were looking at— if he was fighting the programming, or if he was just shutting down, or what... And he wasn’t coming out of it, so after a whole day of that, and no improvement, that’s when Tony suggested we bring him here instead, see if a change in environment would help.”

“That was nice of him.”

“Yeah, well… you know, Tony’s no stranger to trauma himself.”

“Jane told me it’s like one long series of benders over there— of either the tinkering or alcoholic variety. Like he literally can’t slow down, stop.”

“Yeah, well.” Steve shut his eyes and adjusted his body on the towel. “I try not to judge. After Bucky fell… I mean, when I thought he was gone… I woulda given anything to be able to lose myself in a bottle. Probably a good thing for me that I couldn’t.”

She sighed as she looked at him, glittering there in the sun. There was way too much sadness wrapped up inside that perfect body. “Well, it seems like coming here is helping; I mean, he’s talking again, right?”

Steve opened his eyes again. “He started coming out of it on the way up here, but the difference in just twelve hours has been somethin’ else… This morning when he came in for breakfast? That dig about my crappy field coffee…” Steve smiled a little, and his eyes were unfocused a moment. “For just a second there, it was like my old friend was in the room.”

Darcy reached out and put her hand on his bare arm, and he blinked, composing himself. “I think bein’ out here, away from the threat of tests, people pokin’ at his body… the possibility of discovery… it’s better here. He can breathe.”

“Do you know what brought it on?” she asked. “When he… shut down or whatever? At the Tower?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Pretty sure.”

Before he could elaborate, he was interrupted by the sound of the security system pulsing out the safe-room alarm. It was loud, the outdoor speakers doing their job.

“Oh, hey,” she said, jumping up. “That’s the safe-room calling us. I gotta go buzz him out.”

Steve sat up, too. “Do you want me to…”

“No, it’s okay,” she said, “I, um… I don’t want him to think I need a bodyguard just to answer the door.”

“I know who I’d rather have let me out of jail,” came Sam’s voice, loud and clear from the floating pizza, startling them both.

“Sam,” said Steve, sounding unnecessarily offended on her behalf, but Darcy was already hurrying to the wall of sliding glass doors that gave her direct access to the gym.

The air-conditioning hit her like a bucket of ice water as soon as she got inside, and she realized that in her haste to get to the security panel she hadn’t even grabbed a towel to wrap around her body. Her skin was covered in goosebumps as she punched in the code at the first door and went through, ran shivering down the corridor to the second door, and quickly put in the code there as well.

She turned the lever on the door to push it open, and he was right there, ready to come out, but when he saw her he immediately turned his head, angling his eyes away from her. “Uh, sorry… didn’t mean to get you outa the pool…” His eyes darted back to her for a second, and she glanced down to see what he was looking at…

“Oops!” she said, and put her forearms up in front of her boobs, realizing that she’d given him quite the eyeful in the cold air. It occurred to her that maybe she’d be giving him an eyeful even if she hadn’t had the extra nipple action going on. He probably hadn’t had much exposure to swimwear in the past seventy years in the Hydra dungeons…

“Uh…” She could feel that her cheeks were red, but she tried to push past it, play it cool. “Yeah, we’re all out at the pool. Do you wanna come out? The water’s really nice. You don’t have to swim or anything.”

He was still turned away, and didn’t say anything.

“You can bring your book,” she said, trying to convince him.

“Maybe tomorrow,” he said, turning his head a little. “I, uh… just wanted to get a drink of water.”

“Okay,” she said, trying not to sound disappointed. “Help yourself to whatever. Don’t forget to stick the wood in the door if you’re coming right back. I’ll get you a code later so you can let yourself back in next time. I should’ve done that this morning. Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “Don’t wanna trouble you.”

“It’s no trouble,” she said. “I don’t have enough to do around here with Jane gone. I’m basically getting paid to lounge around and drink beer.” She snorted. “Talk about dream jobs.”

It was really awkward, talking to him with his face to the side, like he’d turn to stone if he looked at her, but it didn’t seem like he was going to relax any time soon, so she saved them both from further discomfort: “Okay, then. I’m gonna go back out. We’ll be out there a while longer if you change your mind.”

<<>>

He didn’t change his mind, nor did he join them for dinner, not that it was anything to write home about— just more crappy ‘gourmet’ frozen meals. Steve heated up a couple of extra ones afterwards, and took them over to the safe room, along with a code for Bucky to use to let himself in, which Darcy had scribbled onto a hot pink heart-shaped Post-it note. Steve had raised his eyebrows at it, and she said, “What? It’s either those or poop emojis,” which confused him enough to just drop the subject.

Later that night, lying in bed, she replayed the moment in her head, when he’d seen her body for a split-second in the swimsuit before turning away, and then the extra little peek he’d taken. He’d been flustered, for sure. Was it a 1940s thing? Surely not. Steve didn’t seem to have a problem with her swimsuit. He hadn’t even looked at her boobs once— which, now that she thought about it, was kind of weird. Sam certainly had. Guys always looked at her boobs.

She wondered if Bucky had liked what he’d seen.

 _Jesus, Lewis. Get over yourself_.

<<>>

It was still dark out, but somewhere closer to morning, when she sat bolt upright again. Something had woken her up, had her heart pounding. She sat unmoving for almost a minute, barely breathing, listening intently to the silence in the pitch black. She’d convinced herself it was nothing— just an anxiety dream— but then she heard it again: something between a shout and a scream, distant but definitely there, somewhere below in the darkness of the compound.

She heard voices nearby, doors opening and shutting down the hallway, and then heavy footfalls thumping past her room. She leaned over to grab her phone and check the time: 4:39 a.m.

“Shit,” she said, scrambling out of her covers. She was pretty sure Steve had covertly memorized her code the first time she’d punched it in, but she figured she’d better go anyway. She quickly used the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face, rinsed out her mouth and spat. She grabbed her little robe off the hook by the shower, and pulled it on over her sleep shirt and undies.

She hadn’t heard any more noises, but she knew nothing good was going on down below. She was glad Steve had warned her about Bucky’s nightmares, or she would have been a lot more nervous as she clambered down the floating stairs, gripping the steel railing so she wouldn’t trip on her still-sleepy legs.

As she reached the door to the gym, her legs faltered as the initial burst of adrenaline began to wear off. She quietly turned the lever on the door and pushed it open, peering inside before continuing. The lights were still off in the gym, and it was quiet, and through the sliding glass doors she could see the water in the pool rippling in the glow from the patio lights.

She crept over to the steel door that led to the safe room’s hallway, put in the code to go through, and pushed the heavy door open as it buzzed. She could see Steve at the far end of the hallway, sitting on the floor with his legs bent, forearms resting on his knees. The door to the safe room itself, just across from him, was shut tight.

When Steve saw her coming through, he pushed himself up off the floor. “Hey, Darcy,” he said, softly. He was wearing striped cotton pajama pants and a white ribbed tank top; if he’d noticed she was wearing almost nothing, her ass barely covered by her sleep shirt and the tiny robe, he made no sign of it.

“We gotta quit meeting like this,” she joked.

“They kicked me out,” he said, as if to explain himself.

“How come?” she asked. She resisted the urge to peer through the two-way glass and spy on the guys inside the room, moving closer to the door instead, so that she wouldn’t be visible from inside.

“Well…” he paused and rubbed at the back of his neck. “I sort of came back down last night, and used your code to turn on the two-way intercom for the room. So, you know, we could hopefully hear something if he had any problems. Overnight.”

“Oh,” said Darcy. No wonder it’d woken them all up. “I guess he didn’t like that, huh.”

“Not so much.” He blew out a sigh. “Apparently I missed the other point of him moving down here— which was to give him some more privacy.”

“I guess he hasn’t had much of that… I mean, since you picked him up.”

“Not really,” said Steve. “And after bein’ on his own for so long, just bein’ around other people all the time is hard enough, I think. At the Tower we had to have someone with him all the time, just makin’ sure, you know, he was okay, but also… guarding him. To make sure word didn’t get out, who we had up there.”

“Who all knows, anyway?” she asked. “Besides us?”

“Not many,” said Steve, “and we aim to keep it that way, as long as we can. Lotta people aren’t gonna see it the way I do, the way Sam does.”

“Which is…”

Steve crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall of the corridor, looking down a moment before answering. “Buck was a prisoner for seventy years. They tortured him. Took him apart and made him into something else. I don’t even know the half of it, but it doesn’t matter— I know enough. He— Sam and I think he should be welcomed home. Cared for, like any POW.”

“But I’m guessing it’s not that cut-and-dry, right?” said Darcy.

“No,” said Steve, shaking his head. “He— the Winter Soldier— killed a lot of people. Christ, Darcy, there ain’t gonna be much sympathy for the man who killed the President of the United States, brainwashed or not.”

“You mean JFK?” said Darcy, wide-eyed. “Holy shit,” she said, when Steve nodded his head once, grimly.

“And some of the hits… there was collateral damage. Ordinary civilians. Children…” He paused again. “What I was gonna tell you before… about his shut-down at the Tower? I think he was— I don’t know, having a flashback or…”

When Darcy still looked confused, he clarified: “The Winter Soldier killed Tony’s parents.”

“Oh my God,” said Darcy. She was quiet a minute, taking it in. “Why?”

“You know about how they made me… Howard Stark’s involvement…”

“A little,” she said. “Just, you know… what they teach in school.”

“Howard was still working on the serum— kept trying to improve it, for a long time after they made me. Apparently he finally did it— came up with a stronger version. The Soldier was sent to retrieve the samples, and… eliminate the source, I guess… and Maria…” Steve rubbed his forehead. “Like I said—collateral damage…”

“Does he know? I mean, does Mr. Stark know?”

“Yeah. We, uh… we all knew. Tasha and I already suspected, and then when she dumped all the files online… of course we all went through them, on our own time, as they were decrypted… Tony’s had a few years to think about it— as Sam would say, to figure out who he’s really mad at. Still surprised me when he let us come to the Tower, though. Maybe some of that was Pepper’s doing.”

He let out a short, nervous laugh. “Or like he said, he just wanted a look at that arm. I dunno, maybe he’s obsessed with it in his own way, because of what happened…”

He ran his hand through his hair. “We didn’t know how much Bucky knew, whether he remembered that mission at all. We sort of assumed— stupidly, I guess— that if he was gonna be triggered by Stark it woulda happened already, just seein’ him in the news and all.”

“I’m guessin’ it was seein’ him in person that did it— I mean, I get it— the first time I met him, I could feel Howard all over him. Not just his manner, either— the guy just looks a lot like him. Bucky, he— it was like he was seein’ a ghost. Or worse than a ghost. More like, a shade— somethin’ sent to stalk him, pull him under.”

“God, it makes my stomach hurt,” she said. “All of it.”

“I know,” he said. “Believe me, I know.”

“Did he— does he remember all of it? The other… jobs?”

Steve sagged and rubbed at his forehead again. He looked so tired. In spite of his perfect manners, his attempts to hide his pain, it was plain to see that the man was hurting. He wore his sadness like drapery, the weight of it pulling him down.

“He says he remembers it all, though he’s gettin’ it in pieces, so some of them, he just has images he can’t make sense of yet. I don’t know how much he’s seen online… His memories are— well, they’re unreliable— all over the place. There’s a file that Tasha put together for me, when I started lookin’ for him. Bucky—he was startin’ to go through it, at the Tower… tryin’ to make sense of what he remembered, how it matched up…”

“The serum— I guess it kept trying to repair his mind, no matter how many times they wiped him, or stuck him in cryo. When we were on the carrier, fightin’… I could see it. He was remembering. Didn’t want to believe it.”

He’d had his head down for most of his story, but now he looked at Darcy again, his eyes heavy with the weight he carried. “He was scared…”

“Of losing control? Completing the mission?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “The opposite… I think he’d already made the choice… not to kill me. I mean, I fell, so we’ll never know for sure, but I could see the change comin’ over him. He was scared because… makin’ that choice— becomin’ a person again… it means havin’ to live with all of it… everything he’s done, what they made him do. What he lost.”

He was breathing heavily now, had turned into the wall, pressing his palm against it. “Sometimes I feel like savin’ him just delivered him into another kind of hell,” he said.

The need to move in and hug him became irrepressible. She went in gradually, putting her hand on his arm first, and then when he turned to look at her again, she moved in and grabbed his shirt, trying to wrap her arms around his big, strong body. He seemed surprised, but after a few seconds his arms came around to hold her against him, and she felt him take a big breath in and out.

“It’s gonna be okay,” she whispered, and even though the words seemed trite, meaningless, Steve seemed to welcome them anyway, and his weight relaxed and sagged into her just enough to let her know it.

Too soon he released her, swiped his hand across his eyes, and turned to the bank of windows that looked into the safe room. He had his hands on his hips, and he pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly through his lips.

She tightened up the front of her robe, which was sagging a bit from their hug, and a thought suddenly occurred to her— a possibility she hadn’t considered before, and she studied the man in front of her, pondering…

“Steve?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Can I ask you something? Um, kind of personal?”

He opened his eyes and looked over. He was leaning on the ledge of the windows with his hands, the position making his triceps pop out— it seemed like the man’s body was physically incapable of relaxing. “Sure, Darcy. Anything.”

“Okay… please don’t freak out or anything, because whatever your answer is, it’s totally cool with me, but, um…”

He’d turned to her now, unable to hide the slight concern she’d caused with her hedging disclaimer. She forged on, before she could freak him out any further. “Were you and Bucky, um… you know— together? Before?”

She was watching his face carefully, and she could see him go through several stages of confusion, trying to put together her question with the care she’d taken in asking it, until finally she saw understanding hit him and he stepped back, putting one hand on his hip.

“No!” His first word was a protest, but then he softened it. “No. Uh….” He chuckled then, and scratched at the corner of his jaw. “Fact is, if anyone’s his type, you are. I mean, woulda been, before.”

“Oh,” she said, _filing that away for later_ … 

He turned back to profile, and she thought that was it, but then he started talking again. “You know back then, the idea of two fellas… especially in the Army. Well. It was illegal, for one thing. Guy gets caught doin’ something, he could be brought up on charges— face a court martial. You could be sent to psych, or discharged, lose your benefits. Those guys— they’d go home, and they were pariahs. Ruined.”

“God,” said Darcy. “That’s so wrong.”

Steve looked at her again, measuring. “It’s hard for me to remember, sometimes, that… well, that it’s different now. When Sam told me that two guys can— I mean, can even get married now? If they wanna? I thought he was makin’ fun of me. Pickin’ on the old man again. But then he pulls out his phone and shows me a picture of a wedding he went to last year— some friends of his, couple’a guys. It’s…” He made a scoffing sound. “Sometimes it feels like I’m livin’ in one of Bucky’s sci-fi magazines. Like it ain’t real.”

Though Steve hadn’t said it outright, Darcy was fairly certain he was telling her what she suspected, as best he could. She reached out and squeezed his arm, and he gave her a soft half-smile in answer, though it didn’t reach his eyes. He turned to look through the window again. “Bucky’s my family. Always has been. I just don’t know if I’m his, anymore.”

There was nothing for her to say to that, and the statement hung in the air between them like a sad cloud. She finally looked through the window, and could see Sam squatting on the floor, talking in earnest to Bucky, who was slumped in a pile of disheveled bedding, his dark hair hiding his face. He’d pulled the sheets and duvet off the huge mattress at some point, and had set up camp on the floor instead.

He’d slept in his clothes— she could see the metal prosthesis peeking out of the black sleeve of his rumpled shirt, where it wasn’t covered by the sheets pooled around him. With the intercom off, she couldn’t hear a thing they were saying. They must have been wrapping it up, though, because Sam pushed himself up from the floor, and dusted off his hands. Bucky remained where he was, tangled in the bedding, staring at the opposite wall.

Sam turned and glanced up, saw Steve and Darcy watching through the window, and gave them an exasperated look that made Darcy feel like they’d been caught listening at the door with a tin can. She felt guilty, and turned away from the window, but Steve just moved to hover by the door, waiting for Sam to bang on it, and then Steve put in the code to buzz it open.

Sam was already belting out words as the door latched shut behind him again: “Okay, see? This is exactly what I was talking about. Man’s got enough stress without the two of y’all sittin’ out here like a couple of first-time parents.” Darcy almost smirked when, after his outburst, she caught the exact moment that he noticed her state of relative undress, and that her robe did little to hide her assets.

Steve, for his part, ignored Sam’s reprimand: “Is he okay?”

“Seems like the SSRI they started him on, over at the Tower, isn’t helping at all,” said Sam. “His body’s probably metabolizing it too fast to have any effect, even with the high dosage. I told him to keep takin’ it, though— could be weeks before he notices any improvement, if it’s even gettin’ through.”

“I doubt it is,” said Steve. “You wouldn’t believe the dosages I gotta take when I actually need somethin’.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Sam. “But that’s not the main issue here.”

“What’s—” started Steve.

“He’s embarrassed,” said Sam. “Didn’t need to have his nightmare broadcast over the fuckin’ intercom for everyone to hear.”

Steve shook his head. “He’s got nothing to be— ”

“Don’t,” said Sam, a warning in his voice. “He already feels like you’re trying to control him. Don’t go deciding how he should feel, on top of it.”

“How am I— ” Steve cut himself off, and turned, pacing. Darcy could feel his frustration— it was all coming from a place of caring, but she knew Sam was right.

Sam relaxed his shoulders, and turned his attention to Darcy, who was still shrinking a little under his misconception that they’d been eavesdropping. But Sam’s voice was relaxed and business-like when he addressed her.

“Darcy, is there a way we can re-route the signal for the door locks, so that it gets sent to a Starkphone, instead of the security system?”

“Probably,” she said, grateful to step back from the emotional tension. “I mean, I can definitely find out. I’ll let you know when I do, so we can set up your phone—”

“Not mine,” said Sam. “Yours.”

Steve looked up from his nervous pacing, and Darcy glanced at him, her look saying, _don’t ask me_ , before she turned to Sam again.

“But why—”

“I think he feels more comfortable with that arrangement,” said Sam, pointedly not looking at Steve. “He, uh… he appreciates that you don’t have any… personal feelings about who he is, or was.”

“And you do?” she asked, while also thinking, _I’m not so sure about that_ — they didn’t know about her dopey high-school fantasies.

Sam half-chuckled, without smiling. “Man did try to kill me, a bunch of times. Wasn’t personal, but.”

“Right,” said Darcy. Even knowing the basic facts, it was too easy to forget the violent history there.

“Anyway, it’s not about what I think,” said Sam. “It’s about what he wants. I mean, if you’re okay with it.”

“Sure,” said Darcy. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Sam nodded once, settling the matter, and finally returned his attention to Steve. “Okay there, Rogers?”

Steve sighed and bowed his head, one hand on his hip. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want to mess this up, but that’s what I keep on doing.”

Sam shook his head. “We’re all on the same side here. You uh… you wanna meet back here at oh-six-hundred, maybe go for a jog around the property?”

Steve was nodding. “Yeah. Okay.” And then, “You think Buck’ll join us?”

“He might,” said Sam. “Darcy, you wanna come?”

She let out what was essentially a bark of laughter. “Me? Go jogging with you guys? Yeah, right. You’d have to carry me back on a stretcher. I think I’ll stick to the treadmill here, for mere mortals and invalids.”

The guys laughed, enjoying her easy humor. It felt good to see them smile, to break the lingering tension a little.

“God,” said Darcy. “I feel like we need a group hug right about now.”

“I’m down with that,” said Sam, and pulled her effortlessly into his side, making her squeak and then giggle. He beckoned to Steve with his other hand. “Get in here, Rogers.”

“Uh…” Steve had two little patches of pink forming on his cheeks. It was surprising— with the man’s reputation for steady command— how easy it was to fluster him.

“Get that fine ass over here before I come and get it myself, and that’s an order,” said Sam, and Darcy burst out laughing. It really was the best medicine. She only wished they could share it with the man on the other side of the wall.


	5. Chapter 5

When Sam had asked her about re-routing the safe-room alarm, she’d played it like it was no biggie, something that would dovetail easily with her existing duties. She’d been determined to handle it while the guys were out on their morning jog, proving to herself how useful and efficient she could be. Now, faced with actually doing something about it, she realized that she didn’t have the faintest fucking idea how to do it.

She swallowed her pride— something she was pretty good at, apparently— and pulled her phone out, scrolling through her contacts to find the new entry for Mr. Stark. Surprisingly, he picked up after only a couple of seconds, in spite of it being very early in the morning. He was probably still awake from the night before.

“Hey, kiddo,” he said. “How’s everything going over there? How’s the one-armed wonder?”

Now that she knew about his parents, and the Winter Soldier’s role in their death, Darcy flinched internally at his casual wit. She wondered if Tony Stark used humor as a cover just as much as she did. She took a breath and did her best to sound intelligent. “Um, I need to know how to disable the safe-room protocols to re-route the open-door-request alert from the main security system to a designated Starkphone.”

“Straight to business,” he said. “I can dig it.” Then, after a beat, “So you put the Murder-Bot in the slammer, huh? Ouch. Can’t say I blame you, though, seeing as how—”

“It was his decision,” she interrupted. “Anyway, can you just tell me how to do it?”

“I can do better than that,” he said, and in the background she could hear some soft electronic noises and then some muttering and then he said, “Whose phone?”

“Mine,” she said, and felt her face heat up. She braced herself for some kind of snarky comeback, but to her surprise, there wasn’t one.

“Done,” he said a moment later, and her phone simultaneously chimed in her ear. “Check your downloads; you’ll find a new app. You’ll need to set it up to clone the controls over from the main system. Was that all?”

“Uh… yeah,” she said.

“All right then. Have fun; play nice with the other kids.”

“Um…” Before she could respond, she heard a double beep that indicated the call had been ended. “Huh. O-kay,” she said aloud, drawing out the last syllable.

She scrolled over to downloads, and sure enough, there was a file there, named _Nicky_P_ — no doubt more Stark humor, though the reference was lost on her. She clicked on it, watched a progress bar for all of two seconds, and then her phone automatically rebooted. When it came back up less than a minute later, she paged through to the end of her apps to find a new icon: a simple line-drawing of a padlock on a silver background. She almost tapped on it instinctively, but stopped herself, and decided to wait until Bucky could help set it up. It was supposed to be about his choices, not hers.

She checked the time: barely after seven. Getting the instant solution from Tony had shaved a lot off her self-assigned duties for the day. Her phone conversation with Jane still sat sour in her gut like a bad meal, and she’d actually looked forward to the distraction of work, but there was literally nothing for her to do. Because she was that important. Hooray.

She closed the lid of her laptop, pushed away from her desk, and headed to the kitchen to get a refill on her coffee. Maybe Bucky would want a cup. He’d apparently refused to go jogging with the guys; he was probably still pissed off at Steve.

<<>>

Twenty minutes later, she was making her way down the hallway with far more than a cup of coffee, trying not to second-guess her impromptu plan: she’d loaded up a tray with simple breakfast foods— stuff anyone could make, heavy on the protein and carbs. If she couldn’t be useful in the work-room, at least this was something she _could_ do. There hadn’t been a peep from the safe room since his pre-dawn dose of humiliation, and she was worried he was going to hide out in his room all day… which was fine— his choice— but even in hiding, super-soldiers needed to eat.

After buzzing through the first secure door, she approached the thick windows, and peered through. He was awake, at least: she could see him in there, lying on his side on the bare mattress of the bed, a paperback pressed open under his hand. She knocked on the window, and he startled and looked up. She gave him a dorky smile and then, with raised eyebrows and her free hand, delivered what she hoped were the universal signs for, “ _Me — in there — okay?_ ”

He let the book fall shut but kept it in his hand, using one of his metal fingers to mark his place, and nodded, just a quick dip of the head that she would have missed if she hadn’t been watching closely. He swung his legs around so that he was seated on the edge of the mattress and held the book in his lap.

Balancing the tray against her chest, she buzzed into the room, braced the door open with her butt, trying not to slosh the coffee around too much, and tried to reach the wooden doorstop with her foot so that she could slide it over. When he saw what she was doing, he stood, moving more quickly than she’d seen so far, to grab the door and hold it open for her.

“Thanks,” she said. “Um…where should I… huh. There’s no desk in here. I never really noticed before.”

“S’okay,” he said, in his soft way, and then cleared his throat. “Floor’s fine.” He used his bare foot to push the piece of wood over, propping the door open, and watched her set the tray on the floor, next to his nest of blankets and covers. He ran a hand through his dark hair, pushing the stray curving strands back from his face. It was damp— apparently he’d finally taken a shower, and put on fresh clothes. “You… don’t need to do that.”

“Do what?”

“Bring me food.”

“Aren’t you hungry? You gotta be hungry. Steve’s already eaten half the stuff Barton brought in.”

He didn’t answer, which she took as a silent confirmation, and she said, “People gotta eat. Seriously, it was no problem— I was having toast anyway, so making a couple more slices wasn’t like some hardship.” Her explanation sounded stupid even to herself, with the evidence of more effort than a couple of slices of toast sitting right there.

“Um…” she was feeling the first threads of anxious energy burning inside her chest, and so she did what she always did when she felt awkward: talked more, and made it worse.

“I hope you aren’t allergic to peanuts. Or cinnamon. I did eight-minute eggs, so they should be just done in the center; I know most people boil ‘em longer but I hate when they get that green stuff on the yolks, you know? I can bring you something else if you don’t like any of this stuff. There’s fake pop-tarts and cereal and that barfy oatmeal that Steve likes, and I could probably do a grilled cheese if there’s any bread left from the sandwiches, or—”

Bucky was sitting on the edge of the bed again, and he put up his flesh hand— the metal one was still holding his place in the book— and said, “Darcy, stop. This is… fine. It’s— more than fine. You should see what I was livin’ on… before Steve came and got me.”

“Oh yeah?” She was a little surprised to hear him use her name. For some reason she felt like he’d been unclear who she was, or why she was even there. It was also more than she’d heard him say since he’d arrived; she was surprised by how normal it sounded, except for the odd pause here and there.

She was waiting for him to elaborate, and when she realized that he wasn’t going to, she said, “So, um… I’ll leave you to eat, but do you want to set up the alarm thing quick, before I go?” He gave her another curt nod, and she looked around for somewhere to sit, but there was nothing, so she just pulled her phone out of her pocket and scrolled over to the new app.

“Tony sent this over to me, but I haven’t actually set it up yet.” She approached him and angled the phone so he could see the screen, but the position was awkward, and she felt the urge to sit down next to him on the bed— it would have been a natural choice with anyone else, but she didn’t want to freak him out by invading his personal space. He seemed to read her mind though, and moved over, giving her a nonverbal cue that she could sit if she wanted to. He shifted his book to his flesh hand, on the side closest to her, and subtly tucked the metal one out of sight on the other side of his body.

She sat down on the bare mattress and opened up the app, holding the phone between them so he could see what she was doing. He was so close, she could feel the warmth from his body, and hear him breathing, smell the body wash he’d used in the shower: something expensive-smelling and clean with notes of lavender and birch.

As he leaned in closer to get a better look at the screen, he shifted the position of his left hand on the mattress, and she almost flinched when she heard some kind of machinery whirr inside of it as it adjusted. She felt her heart speed up slightly, and she hoped he couldn’t hear it, afraid he’d misinterpret it as fear.

Though the logical part of her knew she should still consider him dangerous, she just… didn’t. She remembered what Sam had said about trusting her instincts— and her instincts were telling her the same thing Steve had said, in the kitchen: that Sergeant Barnes was not a threat to her, just as she didn’t consider Steve or Sam a threat, even though they were all big strong men who’d killed people, and who could overpower her in the blink of an eye if they wanted to.

Might be good to avoid smacking into him around any more blind corners, though.

“So,” she said, scrolling through the options, “let’s see. Okay. Looks like there’s not much to it: we just decide how many types of alerts we want. Check it out— we can assign different tones for different situations.” She smiled and said, “Dude, we could totally have a code for like, ‘Steve is mother-henning me; please come save me!’” She was rewarded when he made a soft noise that could almost pass for a chuckle, and she counted it as a win.

She picked a standard, inoffensive tone for regular exit requests and a more urgent one for emergencies. She’d been joking about the ‘save me from Steve’ alarm, but she decided to program it in anyway, as a reminder that he did have control over his environment, and who was in it.

“No, we do _not_ want it to sound like an old-timey car horn, thank you very much,” she said, as she went through the choices.

“No, keep it,” he said, leaning in a little. His voice was low, close to her ear, and poured like something thick, liquid. She glanced at his face, mere inches away— his lips were slightly parted, and she thought she could detect the barest hint of a smile.

“Okay,” she said, pressing her own lips together as a grin threatened to escape, and she clicked to save the settings. She felt her face heat up, and she drew in a deep breath. Her heart was still pounding from his proximity, and she was starting to feel the need to flee before she said something stupid.

“Well. That should do it.” She stood up abruptly, and swiveled around so that she was facing him again. “I’ll, uh… get out of your way, so you can eat your food before it all gets cold.”

“Don’t matter,” he said.

She was backing away, but his last comment squished her heart a little, and she stopped.

“You okay?” she said.

He was looking down, fiddling with the paperback, and he said, “Not really,” but then looked up and held her eyes. “But don’t worry about it.”

“Oh— okay. Well, _bon appétit_.” Jesus. _Shut up_ , Darcy.

She heard him pull the security door shut behind her after she left, and she tortured herself, replaying her stupid words over and over in her head, all the way to the workroom. She was a fucking idiot.

<<>>

She was back in the kitchen a couple hours later— she'd cleaned and organized the workroom, and now she truly had nothing else to do, and was refueling on more coffee and peanut-butter toast, when a text from Jane popped up on her phone: _Darce. Sorry about before. I’m just worried about you. Please just be careful and know that you can always come to the Tower. I miss you!_

She put down the toast and wiped her hand on her jean shorts to get rid of crumbs, paused a moment with both her thumbs over the screen, thinking, and then quickly typed out a response: _Hey, no biggie. Don’t worry about me. We are literally just swimming and hanging out here, nothing crazy happening. Bucky in Banner’s old room. All is well_.

She clicked to send it before she could change her mind, and waited, taking a sip of coffee. The mug clinked on the island’s stone countertop as she set it down, still waiting, but there was no response. She flipped the phone over and was just finishing the first triangle of toast when she heard the chime for an incoming message.

_Oh it’s “Bucky” now, is it?_

She grinned as she swiftly thumbed out her reply: _Fuck you_. She added a smooch-face emoji, so that Jane would know it was light-hearted. A second later she got a heart emoji back, along with, “ _Glad you’re ok— TTYL_.” She flipped the phone over again, screen down, as Steve ducked his head into the room.

“Hey, has Bucky buzzed out yet?” he asked.

“Nope,” she said. “But I took a big tray of food over to him a while ago. Guy needs to eat more.”

“Oh,” he said, sounding surprised. “Uh… thanks, Darcy. You didn’t have to do that.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” she said. “I mean, I know I don’t _have_ to. I wanted to.” She used her other piece of toast to point at him. “Don’t think that means I’m gonna start cooking for everyone, though. Even if I wanted to— which I don’t; I only know how to cook like four things.”

Steve laughed. “Well, that’s about two more than I know, and only if you count oatmeal and sandwiches.”

Steve’s phone rang, and he turned sideways in the doorway— a nod to discretion— to answer it. “Barton. What’s up.”

Darcy finished the rest of her toast and took the crumb-covered plate to the sink, but held off on rinsing it while Steve was on the phone. She wasn’t trying to eavesdrop— she was trying to be polite— but couldn’t really avoid hearing his end of the conversation. It didn’t sound like anything top secret, anyway— she heard Steve say something about hot dogs.

“Barton’s gonna come by this afternoon with some more food,” he said, after he hung up. “He, uh… he also said we could have a barbecue or something… if that’s okay.”

“Oh my God, that’s a great idea!” Darcy practically squealed. “We can finally use that fancy fucking grill— I swear, I don’t think it’s ever been used. I hope we have some propane. I don’t even know.”

“I can check,” said Steve. “I’ll have him pick some up if we need it.”

“What do we need?” asked Sam, as he came into the kitchen. He was freshly-showered and smelled like man products— a blend of pine cones and mint and a touch of cologne.

“Barton’s coming,” said Steve. “Told him to bring hot dogs.”

Sam whipped out his phone and clicked on something, held the phone to his ear. “Barton,” he said a moment later. “Sam here. Yeah. You at HQ, or the Tower?”

She could hear him giving Barton some kind of instructions for a paper bag to bring, and where to find it, along with some fresh ingredients he needed. “And a bag of Cheetos,” he said, right before hanging up.

“Marry me,” said Darcy.

<<>>

Barton arrived on the Quinjet in the mid-afternoon, and made quick work of getting the grill going while Sam made some drinks with the special supplies he’d requested; before too long the aroma and sizzle of cooking meat had transformed the patio into the happy place it was meant to be. The sun wasn’t high in the sky any more, but it was still over 80 degrees, and humid.

“ _Madame_ ,” said Sam, as he handed Darcy a freshly-mixed mojito.

Darcy had just shoved an indelicate number of Cheetos into her mouth, so she gave him a thumbs-up in thanks as she accepted the tall, skinny glass with its clinking ice cubes. They’d made themselves comfortable on Tony’s immaculate outdoor furniture, made of rich weather-resistant teak, and she had to fight her instinct to wipe her nuclear-orange Cheeto fingers on the ivory cushions. She sucked the crumbs off instead, one finger at a time.

“Man, that water looks nice,” said Barton, as he gave the hot dogs a turn with a pair of metal tongs. “How come we don’t have a pool at HQ?”

“You gonna swim?” asked Darcy. “There’s still plenty of light. And it’s heated, so it’ll still be nice after the sun goes down.”

“Didn’t bring any trunks,” said Barton. “Guess I could just go in _au natural_ ,” he said, winking.

Sam said, “Uh, please don’t,” making Darcy grin.

She stirred her drink, poking at the lime wedge with the little straw, and turned as she heard the sliding glass door opening behind them. She saw Steve come out, with Bucky following behind, but Steve came toward them alone while Bucky broke off and wandered away down the gravel path toward the other side of the house.

Barton turned the weenies again, and they sizzled as they gave up their juicy fat. Steve lifted a hand in greeting as he made his way over to them. “Smells good,” he said. "How long ’til we eat?”

“First batch is just about ready,” said Barton. “Barnes gonna join us?”

“Think so,” he said. “Said he would. Just wanted to take a walk first, get some air. Been inside all day.”

“Well, we got plenty of dogs, so I’ll keep the grill going as long as you guys wanna eat ‘em.”

“Sounds good,” said Steve. He found the cooler, lifted the top and grabbed one of the green bottles that were nestled in the ice inside. He twisted the cap off with his hand and took a long drink, leaning his head back, and then wiped his mouth with the back of his free hand. “Man, that hits the spot.”

Darcy set her glass down on the little mosaic-covered side-table next to her. “So is it really true that you can’t get drunk? Like, no matter how much you drink?” She remembered what he’d said about wishing he could, after Bucky fell, but was curious whether it was absolute. 

“Huh? Oh, yeah. There’s a lot of stuff people get wrong about me, but that one’s true.” Steve found an empty chair and dropped into it with a sigh. “Still like the taste, though. I guess my brain still remembers all the other— what do you call it?”

“Associations,” supplied Sam.

“Yeah. Associations. Like Bucky with the coffee, I guess. The good stuff I connect to the taste, the smell…. Buck used to bring a box of Schaefer home sometimes after work, and we’d sit out back on the fire escape, drinkin’ and waitin’ for the apartment to cool off. We didn’t have air conditioning back then, you know.”

“Yeah, Grandpa, you keep reminding us,” said Barton, with humor.

“You guys lived together?” Those kinds of details weren’t in her high school history book.

“Just after my Ma died, and ’til Bucky shipped out. So, not for very long. It was cheaper, and Buck, well, he was gettin’ sorta cramped over at his folks’ place.”

“You mean he couldn’t bring his lady friends back there,” said Sam, chuckling, and Steve took another swig of beer, not denying it.

“What about Bucky? Does he drink? I mean, does it affect him?” Darcy quickly added, “I mean, if it’s okay to talk about it.”

“You know, I couldn’t honestly say,” said Steve, and a little furrow appeared between his brows. “We know he’s got some version of the serum, but it’s not exactly the same as what I got. It’s kind of a mixed bag.”

“Do you guys need to work out a lot? I mean, I guess that’s a stupid question: obviously all you guys work out a ton— but I mean, is that part of his therapy too?” And then, “I’m sorry; I feel like I’m interrogating you or something.”

“It’s okay,” said Steve. “It can be. You know, therapeutic. He, uh… well, you know about the bad dreams already. And he’s got, you know, just general anxiety, most of the time. Exercise helps with all of that. Being physical. It helps work off the adrenaline, gets you out of your head.”

Darcy nodded. “Yeah, I get that. I mean, obviously not on the same level. I pretty much hate exercise, but if I’m having a shit day and I’m all up in my head, spinning on the bike or dancing or something is just about the only thing that’ll get me out of the doom spiral,” she said.

“You like to dance?” asked Sam.

“Why, you gonna dance with me later?” she teased.

“Maybe,” he grinned.

“What about you,” she asked Steve. “You like to dance?”

“Gramps over there only does that ballroom shit,” said Sam. “You know, like where you have your arms bent up like a couple of scarecrows and you step on each other’s feet.”

“Well, you’re not wrong about that part,” said Steve. “I can’t dance to save my life. Bucky, he was the dancer.”

“Oh yeah?” More stuff the books left out.

“Yeah. You shoulda seen him. He’d get going with one of his dates, and people would actually back up and just watch them go. It was something to see.” Darcy tried to imagine it, but it was hard to believe, based on the stiff, guarded man she’d seen so far.

“First batch is ready,” said Barton abruptly.

Sam and Steve got up and grabbed some plates, and started to pile them with food. “Can I fix you something, Darcy?” asked Steve.

“Nah, I can get my own. I’m just gonna quick run for a potty break,” she said, and heaved herself up out of the comfy chair. “Don’t eat them all without me!” she yelled as she jogged toward the pool house to use the little bathroom inside.

A few minutes later, she was pulling the door shut behind her as she exited the pool house, and as she spun around to head back to the patio, she ran smack into Bucky, who was coming around the corner from the front side of the property. She didn’t shriek this time— just gasped and said, “Jesus Christ,” and put her palm against her chest as she tried to recover. Then, laughing, she said, “It’s like some magnet keeps pulling me into you.”

A second after she said it, she realized how corny it sounded, and could feel her face heat up in a deep blush. At least this time he didn’t seem to be frightened by their collision. He just took a step back to put some space between them, and looked down for a moment before meeting her eyes again. And then, to her surprise, he spoke.

“I, uh… thank you for the food. Before. I was… pretty rude.”

“What? No. Or if you were, I didn’t notice. Huh. Maybe I’m just so used to rude that I can’t see it anymore when it happens.” He was just watching her with those cautious blue eyes, and she couldn’t shut up. “Nah— I’m gonna go with the first answer, and say that you weren’t rude, and you’re just gonna have to live with that. By the way, the hot dogs are ready. You coming?”

“Uh… I guess so, yeah.”

“Cool.”

She started to walk toward the patio, and after a moment, she could hear him coming too, several arm’s lengths behind her. She resisted the urge to turn her head and keep track of where he was, but kept her pace a little slower than usual— she had the sensation that if she hurried ahead, he might just break off again.

In that staggered fashion, they both made their way back to the patio, where Darcy made a beeline for the serving tray piled high with grilled hot dogs. Her mouth was already watering from the smell of food that had been cooked by an actual flame, instead of a microwave.

“Inspecting my work?” said Barton, as she used the tongs to dig through the pile methodically.

“Trying to find the ones with the most char,” she said. “That’s how I like ‘em.”

Bucky had made it to the patio by then, and she was glad to notice that nobody made a big deal about his showing up. She decided to just go for it, and shove food at him again. “How many you want to start with,” she asked, turning slightly toward him. “Two? Three?” She was fumbling with the plastic bag of buns, and put a couple on each of two plates, and then used her fingers to deposit wieners into the buns— charred ones for her, and regular-looking ones for him. “I’m just gonna assume you don’t want yours totally nuked like mine.” He hadn’t said a word, but when she held the plate out to him, he took it.

“You want mustard on your hot dog, Buck?” asked Steve, offering the bottle to him.

“Don’t know…,” said Bucky, looking warily at the yellow plastic container. “That how I… used to eat ‘em?”

“Sure,” said Steve, still holding it out. Bucky’d been holding the plate with his flesh hand, keeping the prosthesis at his side and almost behind his hip, but now he switched hands so that he could take the mustard with the flesh one. Darcy wondered if it was something he did automatically, learned from years of having to hide it on the street, or if it was on his mind all the time.

“We’d go to Nathan’s, in Coney Island,” said Steve. “Get ‘em with mustard and onions and kraut. We don’t have all of that here, but we do have the mustard.”

“What, no ketchup?” said Darcy, reaching for the big squeezy Heinz bottle. Sam, Barton and Steve all turned to look at her with mock outrage. “What?” she snapped, laughing at their stern faces.

“No self-respecting New-Yorker—” began Steve.

“— or Midwesterner,” broke in Barton.

“—puts ketchup on a frankfurter,” finished Sam.

“Jeez, why don’t you just shoot me,” said Darcy, and pointedly squirted a huge red stripe down the length of her hot dog. “Why’d you even buy it then, if it’s such a crime against humanity?” She heard Bucky make that little sound again, like he had in the safe room— like an almost-chuckle, barely audible.

The other guys were silent a moment, thinking, until Barton blurted out, “Manners.”

“Yup, manners,” said Steve.

“Exactly,” said Sam. “If you wanna destroy your food, who are we to judge?”

Darcy laughed. “But you _are_ totally judging me! Right now!” She took a huge bite of the hot dog and groaned with pleasure as the salty-sweet goodness reached her taste buds. “Oh my god. It’s been too long. I don’t care what any of you say; this is the best thing I’ve tasted in three months.” She caught Bucky looking at her as she used her tongue to swipe a blob of ketchup off the corner of her mouth, and she turned away, suddenly feeling self-conscious.

“You gonna try it?” said Sam. Darcy realized he was talking to Bucky, who was holding one of the hot dogs in his right hand— the flesh one— and looking at it like he’d forgotten what it was, or why he was holding it. Ignoring Sam’s question, he walked over to the edge of the pool, sat down, letting his bare feet and the bottoms of his sweatpants hang into the water, and put the plate next to him on the coping, and then set the hot dog back down on it, untouched.

Steve looked like he was going to say something, but Sam smoothly interrupted him on his inhale, and started pointedly talking about baseball, and within a couple of minutes Steve and Barton were fully engaged with him in a topic that Darcy couldn’t even pretend to be interested in. That was okay, though— she’d seen what Sam had done there.

She finished snarfing down her two hot dogs— they were so good she could have eaten two more, but she knew her intestines would visit a horrible revenge on her if she did— and left her empty plate on the patio table. She casually made her way over to the pool, kicked off her flip flops, and sat down on the edge a few feet away from Bucky, on his left, letting her own bare feet dangle into the water. The water was warm, but still felt wonderful, refreshing in the humid air, and she took in a deep breath and then let it out slowly.

For the first time in a long time, she didn’t feel like she needed to fill up the space with words— she just enjoyed the feeling of the water on her feet, the hot stone under her hands, the smell of the barbecue— such a quintessential summery smell, evoking happy memories of childhood and long days of careless play. She wondered what Bucky remembered of his childhood, if anything, or if Hydra had burned all of that away.

“You changed your toes,” he murmured out of nowhere, surprising her.

“Huh?”

“They were red yesterday,” he explained.

She wiggled her toes, under the water. They were painted in turquoise with silver sparkles now. “Yeah,” she said. “I kind of go crazy with toenail polish. Not so much my fingers, because I do too much stuff with my hands and they get wrecked right away. But my toes— especially in the summer? I’ve always got something on ‘em, switch it out a lot. Like, when I’m bored or anxious or whatever.”

“What was it this time?”

“Hm?” She moved her feet in the water, a gentle scissoring, forward and back, making little waves.

“Bored, or anxious.”

“Bored,” she said. “There’s not much for me to do, right now. I shouldn’t complain, though. I’ll probably have a shit-ton of data to organize next week. I should try to enjoy it while it lasts.” She paused and thought about it. “Maybe a little anxious too, I guess.”

He touched the water with his metal finger. She wondered how much he could feel with it, if anything. “Because of… us… bein’ here?”

“What? No— I like you guys being here,” she said. “No, I just got in a little fight with a friend, and it was making me feel shitty. But it’s all cool now.”

She saw him lean forward then, and dip the metal hand fully into the water to pull out a leaf that had fallen in. She watched, fascinated, as the plates that made up the prosthesis shifted themselves to form a seal, keeping the water out.

“Wow,” she said, blinking. “Do you, like, have to consciously do that, or is it automatic?”

He pulled the hand out and tossed the leaf aside. “Automatic, I guess. Don’t remember. A lot of it's like drivin', or somethin'. Lotsa little things goin’ on that you gotta remember… but after a while you don’t even think about it…”

“God, yeah,” she said. “There were days in New Mexico when I’d be driving for over an hour to get to the big grocery store, and I’d get there and be like, ‘How the fuck did I even get here,’ because I sure as shit wasn’t present for most of the driving. It’s like I went away in my head and my body just kept on going, and somehow I still made it to Point B in one piece, like some kind of fucking miracle.”

He was looking at her now, his head turned, lips parted slightly. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s exactly like that.”

Something about the intensity in his manner unnerved her, and she found herself looking back down to the water again, unable to hold his gaze. “You should try the hot dogs,” she said. “They’re really yummy.”

She heard him exhale and then saw him in her peripheral vision, picking one up, and, a moment later, put it back down, minus a large bite. She waited for some kind of reaction, but he didn’t say a word, and finally, after almost a minute of silence, she said, “So? What’s the verdict? Yea, or nay?”

He didn’t answer her, but she could hear him breathing, and when she finally snuck a glance over, something in his face made her want to avert her eyes again. She wasn’t sure what the emotion was, but it seemed too private for whatever stage of proto-acquaintanceship they were in.

“You okay?” she said softly, anyway, and she saw him work his jaw, holding his lips closed, and then he turned his head away from her, but not before she saw the tear that had leaked out of his eye and run down the sharp line of his cheek.

 _Fuck. You made him eat the hot dog, and now he’s crying_. She didn’t know what to do— should she acknowledge it? Get up, give him some privacy? She was totally unprepared for this, and looked behind her to get some kind of guidance from Sam, but when she turned around, she was shocked to see that the patio was completely empty— the other three guys had cleared out, totally unbeknownst to her. _What the fuck, when did that happen?_ She looked over to him again, and he was using his flesh hand to rub the wet streak off his face— he seemed more annoyed than embarrassed.

“Should I— do you want me to leave?” she asked. “Do you want to be alone?”

He looked behind them now, too, though she felt sure he’d known exactly when they’d all fled, and made a sound almost like a laugh. “I’m real good at makin’ people uncomfortable.”

“I’m not—” She stopped herself. She’d been about to say she wasn’t uncomfortable, but that would have been a lie. “If I’m uncomfortable, it’s only because I don’t know what you want. If my being here is making it worse.”

He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs, his eyes closed. “It’s not worse,” he said. “But we don’t… you don’t gotta talk, if you don’t want to. If we could just…” He breathed out through his nose. “I just want to… sit here for a while.”

“Okay,” she said, almost a whisper. “We can do that.”

<<>>

They sat there, not talking, for almost an hour; she’d pulled her feet out before they pruned beyond all recognition, but just folded her legs up criss-cross and stayed there with him, until finally he took a deep breath in, almost as though he’d been waiting for it the entire time, and said, “I think I need to lie down now,” and pushed himself up, and walked, pants dripping, back to the sliding glass doors.

She sat there unmoving for another five or ten minutes, unsure what to think about any of it, except that it’d been nice, just sitting there with him, not having to do or be anything at all— just existing…

She saw Sam approaching from the left, and he sat down next to her on the flagstone, legs bent, his forearms resting on his knees. After a minute, he looked over at her and said, “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Why’d you guys all leave like that, though? You made him feel like— he thinks you all ran away because he made you feel uncomfortable.”

“Shit,” he said, dropping his head. “Naw, we left because he was talkin’ to you. Like, conversational. I haven’t seen him do that since we got him off the street. Everything’s been like… need-to-know. Protocol. Expectations, yes-or-no.” He shook his head. “We were tryin’ to give y’all some space to talk, since he seems… comfortable with you.”

“Actually, we mostly just sat here, _not_ talking.”

“And that’s part of it too,” he said. “Learning how to be around people again, beyond just a simple transaction. Sometimes talking— it’s just a cover.”

She barked out a quick laugh. “You don’t have to tell me,” she said wryly. Then, a moment later, she sobered and said, “He was crying a little. I didn’t know what to do. That’s when I realized you guys had all run off.”

“It’s good that he cried,” said Sam. “Real good.”

“It’s hard to see,” she said. “I don’t even know him, but it hurts.”

“I know,” said Sam. “But it’s a real good sign that he’s connecting with those feelings.”

“It was after he tried the hot dog,” she said. “What does that even mean? Do you think he was remembering good things? Or thinking about everything he lost? I mean, I can’t even begin to imagine…”

“Either way,” said Sam. “I mean, feelin’ sad about good memories is a damn sight better than feelin’ sad about bad ones… but ideally, he’s gotta do both. He’s got a lot of work ahead of him.”

Darcy sighed and leaned over, resting her head against Sam’s strong shoulder. “Where’s Steve and Clint?”

“In the kitchen. Still arguin’ about baseball.”

She laughed then. “What, still? Jeez. You’re good, Sam Wilson.”

He grinned. “I know it.”

<<>>

Barton hung around, shooting the shit with the guys until the crickets came out, and when it was time for him to leave, Darcy walked him back to the landing zone. They crunched along the path in silence until they were almost at the jet, when Barton suddenly stopped and turned to Darcy, putting his hand on her shoulder.

“Hey. You gonna be okay? You can still come back with me if you want. Nobody’ll think anything of it.”

“I’m sure,” said Darcy. “I’ll be fine. What about you?” She’d noticed that he’d been a little tense himself, compared to the first time she’d met him.

He gave her a small smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah, I’m good.” He rolled his shoulders and rotated his head a little, like he was stretching out his neck muscles. “Sometimes it’s hard to see… you know, the behavior. A lot of it’s familiar. Brings it all back. Not that what I went through…” He blew out a breath and shook his head. “It’s no good tryin’ to compare it.”

She hadn’t really thought of the similarity before now— both men had been taken prisoner, brainwashed in some fashion, and forced to kill in the service of another. In Barton’s case, it’d only been for a matter of days— he’d killed an undisclosed number of SHIELD agents before the Black Widow had broken him out of Loki’s mind control— but like he said, comparisons served no purpose, unless you were just scouting new angles for self-persecution.

“I gave Sam some contact information for a doctor,” he said. “Lady who helped me, after New York. Maybe she can help Barnes.”

“That’s great,” said Darcy. “I hope she can. I hope he’ll be open to it.”

“Yeah. That’s a big hurdle, right there. Speaking from experience.”

They were both quiet for a minute, and then he reached his arm around her side, and gave her another one of his sideways-hugs. “Give me a ring if you need anything. Or a lift. Either me or Tasha can be here in half a day. Quicker if we’re at HQ. You got my number?”

“Yup,” she said.

“Don’t be afraid to use it.” He nodded to her with raised eyebrows, showing her he meant it, and turned and headed to the rear of the jet.

“Bye, Clint,” she said, softly.


	6. Chapter 6

She slept fitfully that night, waking frequently to check her phone, afraid that she’d missed an alert on the new app. She’d turned up the volume all the way to ensure she couldn’t sleep through anything, but she couldn’t dial down her nerves enough to relax.

Lying in bed, alone with her abusive brain, she’d begun to question the wisdom of being in charge of Bucky’s alarm system. What if he actually had some kind of emergency? She imagined that in the same amount of time it would take her to process what was happening, panic, throw on clothes, and wake one or both of the guys down the hall, Steve or Sam could already be downstairs and in the room, ready to do… whatever.

Finally, just before five in the morning, she gave up and shoved the covers off, and got out of bed. She took a quick shower, trying to wake up her crusty eyeballs, and then put on some basic workout clothes: grey high-cut sport shorts and a turquoise full-coverage sports-bra. She pulled a baggy T-shirt on over that, grabbed some hair elastics and stretched them onto her wrist, and then quietly padded downstairs with her phone and her shoes in her hands, stopping at the kitchen to grab some water before heading to the gym.

It was mostly dark outside— the automatic patio lights were still on, visible through the wall of sliding glass doors— and she found herself succumbing to an especially long yawn as she sat on the mats and tied her shoelaces. _What the fuck are you doing, Darcy?_

In fact, she knew exactly what she was doing: she was going to be anxious until Bucky buzzed her through the app for the first time— they should have tested it right away, though she probably would have felt nervous anyway, waiting for the real thing. Barring actually standing there at the safe-room windows, staring at him like a creep until he woke up, the next best control-freak option was to hover outside his door, pretending it was completely normal for her to work out at five-fucking-thirty in the morning.

After pulling her hair back into a ponytail, she got on the bike and did a five-minute warmup at low resistance. Within another ten, bumping up the resistance every couple of minutes, she’d sunk into the rhythm of an actual workout, in spite of herself. She stayed on longer than usual, appreciating the way the exercise helped organize her thoughts, clear out the anxiety cobwebs. Darcy didn’t enjoy even the minimal exercise she disciplined herself to do, but viewed it almost like medicine she needed to take— for her brain, more than for the rest of her body, which wanted to be soft and curvy, even if she built up the muscles underneath.

After thirty minutes of cycling, she hopped off the bike and pulled the T-shirt off, using it to mop off her sweaty, exposed midsection as she paced around, bringing her breathing down. She wondered if he was awake yet. Maybe he was reading. Maybe he’d been up all night, reading, and was only now getting to sleep. She had no idea what was normal for him; now that he was off the street— and, with the safe room, mostly hidden from Steve’s watchful eye— he probably had some choices he wasn’t used to. Speaking of choices, she should make some: for starters, stop acting like a loser, waiting for the phone to buzz.

She sat down on the mats and pulled off her shoes, stretched out her hamstrings and thighs. Maybe she could do some back stretches for a while. When she was actively working for Jane, she spent so much time in front of a computer that she had a habit of messing up her neck; one morning she’d woken so sore and stiff that she couldn’t turn her head in both directions. Jane had found her a twenty-minute routine online, which should have been called _Yoga for Losers Who Can’t Even Sit Right_ , and Darcy had grudgingly tried it. To her surprise, it’d actually made her feel a million times better, and now it was her go-to routine any time she was feeling tight. Which was not the case right now, but at least it would kill another twenty minutes.

She was about halfway through the routine— the part where you were supposed to roll your straightened legs back over your head, ass in the air, so that your toes touch the mat behind you— when her phone sounded a loud pulsing alert. It was the the basic ‘open please’ signal they’d established the day before— it was supposed to be inoffensive, but her volume was still maxed out; she wondered if he could hear it through the walls, and would think she was spying on him. She grunted and swung her legs forward over her head again, scooted into a sitting position, and grabbed her phone, which was next to her on the mat. She tapped the ‘alarm off’ button in the app and then put in the numbered key-code to deactivate the inner door lock, and then the one for the exit to the gym.

She could hear the inner door opening and closing, and then she saw the levered handle to the reinforced door turn, and Bucky pulled it open and started to step into the gym. He stopped himself mid-stride when he noticed her sitting there on the mat, and froze in the open doorway like he was surprised to see her. Guess he hadn’t heard the alarm through the wall.

“Hey,” she said. She pulled up her legs into a criss-cross position, letting her hands drop in front of her crotch. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

He didn’t respond, but shifted back on his heels, so that the metal side of his body was more hidden in the doorway. He was uncomfortable, but she couldn’t guess why— too many possibilities. She hoped he wasn’t drawing back because of the vulnerability he’d shown her the day before.

“I, um, I was just doing some stretching,” she said. “But I’m basically done; I can leave if you were gonna work out, want the room to yourself.”

“That’s okay,” he said, and then he looked at her again, seemed to make a decision. He came the rest of the way through the metal door, and let it latch behind him. He was wearing grey sweatpants and a white tank-top; it molded over the muscles of his chest and left both of his arms bare, revealing the lean contours of his upper body that’d been hidden under the baggy shirts. He wasn’t as beefy as Steve or Sam, but he looked strong, if a bit underfed— more like a track star than a bodybuilder.

His prosthesis was almost completely exposed, and she could now see that the metal extended into the pectoral area on the left side of his body, disappearing under the fabric of the tank-top. She wondered if that was the reason for his discomfort— that so much of it was showing, on display. He’d probably figured on being alone, this early in the morning.

“You sleep okay?” she asked. He seemed to have noticed her lack of clothing too— the jog-bra didn’t hide much— and she almost got the feeling he was trying to be a gentleman again, avoiding looking at her directly. She would have put her shirt back on, but it was soaked with sweat.

“I don’t sleep much.” he said. “I’ve… been up for a while.” He went over to the treadmill, studied the settings on it for a minute, and then started a comfortable jog.

Darcy wasn’t sure what to do. He seemed okay with her being there now, and she honestly wanted to stay, maybe talk to him more, if he was comfortable with that, but she wasn’t about to pick up where she’d left off in the yoga routine. If her boobs were already making things awkward, then no way was she going to return to a pose that would put both her ass and all her lady parts on display, and put her at risk of letting loose involuntary farts. Yeah, no.

In lieu of that, she did a repeat of her basic leg stretches and seated back-twists, trying not to be too obvious about the sneak-peeks she was taking as Bucky worked his jog, staring ahead at nothing, his long hair loose, moving softly with his stride. It kept falling into his face, and he’d tilt his head, blowing on it, to get it out, but other than that, he was like a machine: steady, fluid, focused.

It couldn’t have been much of a workout for him, and she was surprised he was even bothering, when he could just go outside and run around the property if he wanted to. A little whispered voice inside of her suggested that maybe the real exercise here was being comfortable around other people— and if that’s what he needed, she was game to help out…

She pushed herself up to standing, discreetly pulled her shorts out of her ass, and went over to the little weight rack that looked like it was for Barbie dolls. It had pairs of weights in two, three, and five pounds, in bright Neoprene candy colors. She’d put in a request for it the week she’d arrived, when she’d discovered that the gym’s standard dumbbells started at twenty and ended at one hundred fifty pounds, not including the customizable bars. She’d been uncertain about asking for the girlie weights, but her contact in purchasing had brushed off her hesitancy with an “Oh, please,” and, “Do you know how much Stark’s set cost?” Darcy hadn’t known, until she’d looked it up online, and realized that Stark’s dumbbells alone cost more than her entire first year of college.

She grabbed the little purple ones— three pounds each— and, feeling just a little foolish, went over to the mirrors and started doing shoulder presses and front curls, using far better form than she’d have bothered with if she’d been there alone.

Bucky finished his short warmup jog, and crossed over to the pec deck, selecting a ridiculous starting weight near the bottom of the stack. She could see him perfectly in the mirror as he sat down, blew his long bangs out of his face, and positioned his arms on the pads.

He’d done about forty smooth reps when she finally said, “Dude, is that even a challenge for you? I mean, what’s the point?”

He released the weights, being careful not to let them slam down. “Those little purple things a challenge for you?”

“No,” she admitted. “Not really. I mean, they’ll get heavy after a while. But I’m so frickin’ weak that if I go up to the next size, I can’t do that many reps, and my form is for shit. So I just stick to these, and maybe in another ten years I can move up to the big boys.” She turned to look directly at him, instead of at his reflection. “You know, the _five pounders_.” She waggled her eyebrows for emphasis, and his mouth broke into a quick laugh and smile, as though he couldn’t help it. And holy shit, if that didn’t feel like the sun coming up.

His face completely changed with the smile— made little crinkles at the corners of his eyes, dropping the weariness it always seemed to carry. It was fleeting, but she definitely saw it, and it did something to her that she hadn’t felt in a good long while…

He looked down, composing himself, and then looked up at her again, his brow furrowed in feigned solemnity. “Well, be careful. Wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

Darcy grinned and turned back to the mirror, resuming her set. She could hear him start up again too, and the firm clink and fluid swoosh as the weights rose and fell slipped into a steady, soothing rhythm.

She heard him puff out a breath— again with the bangs— and she said, “You ever think about cutting your hair?”

He kept up the rhythm as he countered, “I dunno, do you?”

“Nope. I look like a butt with short hair. But I’ve got these super hi-tech things called hair ties.” He still hadn’t answered her question, and she decided not to pursue it. She did turn around, though, pulled an extra hair tie off her wrist, and made to throw it at him. In her mind, she’d imagined tossing it in a perfect arc to land in his flawlessly-timed one-handed catch— what a team— but instead it went about six inches before nose-diving onto the floor right in front of her.

“Well, that was pathetic,” she said, and bent down to pick it up. She brought it over to him, holding it out so he could take it. He let the weight stack drop carefully again before lowering his arms. He reached out with his flesh hand and took the tie from her, looked at it second, and then pulled his hair back into a clumsy, loose ponytail. He tried to tie if off, but several curves of chin-length bangs escaped and fell in front of his face again.

She tried not to laugh— she had the feeling he wasn’t in the right head-space to find a lack of dignity amusing…

“I could cut it, if you want,” she blurted out. “I used to cut my friends’ hair in college. Just the guys— I’d never touch a girl’s hair. But guy hair is easy, especially if you have one of those trimmer things and a halfway decent set of shears.”

He’d pulled the tie back out of his hair, and his face was mostly hidden again, his body rigid. “I think that’d be a really bad idea,” he said, low.

There’d been a shift in the air, from the subtle, almost flirtatious back-and-forth they’d been tossing around, to what now felt like a wall: an invisible screen he’d pulled down, and it pushed her back— if not physically, then inside, where she’d been starting to feel just the tiniest peeking out of feelings she shouldn’t be entertaining… not with a guy like him, with such a complicated history. He wasn’t some guy at a bar she could just play around with.

Still, she felt shitty for messing up the mood, and she wanted to rewind, to quit and reload. That being impossible, she figured she’d keep it simple and just apologize, and was taking a breath to do so, when the gym door banged open, and Steve and Sam came into the room, in mid-conversation about the merits of different styles of breakfast oats.

“I’m tellin’ you man,” Sam was saying, “those steel-cut oats are for hipster assholes. You want something tasty for breakfast, you try one of my power smoothies. One taste of those, you ain’t never going back to that la-de-da bullshit.”

“I don’t know half of what you just said,” complained Steve, “but havin’ eaten more than my share of porridge for breakfast, I can tell you, it’s not a luxury food. I just like it because… I mean, I guess it reminds me of my ma.”

“Awww,” crooned Sam, reaching over to pinch Steve’s ear, which earned him a half-hearted smack.

“Knock it off, will ya? Oh hey, Buck. Darcy.”

Darcy was still standing close to Bucky, who’d stood from the pec deck, while Steve did a poor job of trying not to act surprised to see them there together.

Bucky mumbled something about finishing up outside, and pushed his way past them to the sliding glass doors. The chime sounded as he slid one of them open, and when he turned to slide it shut again, he kept his head down, not looking at any of them. Darcy watched as he made his way past the pool area in the direction of the landing zone.

“Everything okay?” said Sam. “We interrupt something?”

“No,” said Darcy, in answer to the second question, and then said, “It’s fine,” to clarify. But she felt bad, responsible for the downward shift in Bucky’s mood. “We were just working out, and it was all good, but then I said something about maybe cutting his hair— I said I could do it, if he wanted— and he just sort of… withdrew. I don’t know what part of it upset him.”

“Huh,” said Steve. To Sam: “You think I should go after him?”

“No,” said Sam. “Give him his space. Let him know we trust him not to run off, even when he’s upset.”

“Do we know that?” asked Darcy, and nobody said anything for a minute.

“That’s the point,” said Sam. “We don’t know, but we gotta believe. That’s what trust is.”

<<>>

Bucky was gone for hours; he came back just as they were finishing up lunch in the kitchen, during which all three of them had pointedly not talked about how worried they were. He entered the kitchen wordlessly and made a beeline for the fridge. The flesh parts of his upper body were shiny and wet, and he was breathing audibly, in and out through his mouth, still coming down from physical exertion.

“Good run?” asked Sam.

Bucky didn’t respond, just opened the fridge and grabbed one of Tony’s fancy artesian bottled waters, cracked the cap, and chugged half the bottle in one go, tipping his head back. Some of the water escaped the mouth of the plastic bottle and dribbled down his jaw to land on his tank-top, which was already soaked through with sweat, clinging to his chest and abs.

“Scouted most of it,” he finally said, gasping. “The woods. Ain’t nothin’ else around for… good forty miles, all directions. Stark own all this land?”

“I’m not sure,” said Steve. “Maybe. Probably.”

“Jeez,” said Darcy, trying not to stare at Bucky’s body— with his heavy breathing, the dripping water, and the way his shirt was sticking to him, it was practically pornographic. “I knew we were isolated, but… I mean, what if we had to get out? Like, an emergency? There’s seriously nothing? Just the one road?”

“Nope,” said Bucky, swiping his mouth with the back of his flesh hand. “I kinda like it.”

“I know what you mean,” said Steve. “As much as I love the city, I gotta admit: the peace and quiet out here is pretty easy to get used to.”

“Yeah, it’s a pretty tough life,” said Sam. “Eat, swim, lift weights… talk to pretty girls…”

Darcy giggled and blushed and was about to hit him with a witty reply, when the security system suddenly burped on, filling the kitchen with a persistent, pulsing alarm. It wasn’t anywhere as awful as the incoming aircraft alarm, but it still startled the men into action, Steve and Sam jumping to their feet, while Darcy pushed back her chair.

“What is that,” said Bucky. He was tense, coiled, and had crushed the empty plastic bottle in his hand.

Darcy spoke with deliberate calm, trying to not to rattle him further. “It’s the alert for a vehicle approaching,” she said. “It trips on when the regular supply guy comes with stuff every couple weeks. But we’re not expecting anything today, so I’m not sure what this is.”

“Better check it out,” said Steve. “Sam?” he said, indicating the other man should join him. To Bucky: “Stay out of sight. You too, Darcy.”

“Sure thing, Cap,” she said. Her instinctive usage of the military title was a response to his own instantaneous shift into Avengers mode. Even his voice got lower, she noticed. It was a tone that issued commands, and didn’t brook argument.

While the two guys jogged down the hall to the main entrance, Bucky and Darcy remained in the kitchen, awkward and silent. Finally Darcy said, “I think I’m gonna go watch on the security screen. I don’t like not knowing what’s going on.”

He flung the crumpled bottle sideways from his body, into an open recycling tub, and followed her wordlessly down to the security room. Once inside the narrow space, Darcy leaned over the desk to switch over one of the screens to show the front gate of the property. Steve and Sam came into view, approaching the gate, but no vehicle was visible yet. She could hear Bucky breathing, behind her, and finally he broke the silence.

“Hey, I uh… I’m sorry about running out on you. Before.”

“It’s okay,” she said, turning around and leaning her butt against the edge of the console. She was dressed in her regular summer clothes again— jean shorts and a tank top— which was usually comfortable or even a little cool in the air-conditioned building, but she felt warm in the small room, and with Bucky so close. She tried to find the words she’d meant to say before, in the gym.

“I was gonna say sorry, for… well, for whatever I said that…” She didn’t know how to end the thought. “If I caused a problem.”

He shook his head once, looking down. “Wasn’t you.” He clarified by saying, “Wasn’t your fault. Sometimes a word, or sound… an idea… I get pictures in my head. Stuff I… don’t wanna think about.”

“And talking about your hair—”

“Not my hair. Haircut. Trimmer. The sound. And the scissors. Standin’ behind me… can’t see what you’re doing.”

“Oh God,” she said, understanding. “I’m sorry, I—”

“You know that guy?” he said suddenly, interrupting her. He nodded his head to indicate the screen behind her, and she swiveled around to look. A van was pulling up to the main gate. She leaned in for a better look, and he came up beside her, fitting himself in on her right, which put his metal hand next to her body as he rested it on the edge of the console. She could smell the deep, musky scent of his sweaty body.

“It _looks_ like Mateo’s van,” she said. “Same logo. Won’t know for sure ’til he gets out.”

On the screen, Steve turned and made some kind of hand signal toward the security camera and Bucky said, “Can you open the gate?”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Steve says open it up.”

Darcy leaned over the console again, entered a seven-digit number into a keypad, and then pressed a button. They both looked back to the screen, and saw the gate slowly retracting into the wall, and then Steve and Sam walked through.

“Who places the orders? For the deliveries?”

“I do… or sometimes someone from the Tower. I don’t schedule the deliveries; that goes through purchasing.”

She kept her eyes on the screen, watching as the van came to a stop.

“What’s the protocol?” said Bucky. “He gotta ring a bell or something?”

“Sort of. He presses a button on the gate, and then I enable the keypad. He has to put in a code— different every time— and when I get the okay, I put in my code and buzz him in.”

“How do you know if it’s okay?”

“They send it over from the Tower, after the delivery is set up. Ah, fuck me.”

“What is it,” he said, tensing next to her.

“Well, it would fuckin’ help if I actually did my damn job.” She had her phone out, and was quickly tapping on the screen, pulling up her work mail. “Yeah, here it is. Came through this morning. Goddammit.”

She glanced up at the security screen again, and could see Mateo standing next to the van, with his hands on his head, on the other side of the open gate. Sam was talking to him, hands up, palms facing toward the man, while Steve stood in a wide stance, arms crossed over his chest.

“Oh, God. Poor Mateo is gonna pee himself.”

Bucky chuckled while Darcy swore again; she jabbed the _Quaker_ button on the console and snatched the hand-held mic out of its carriage on the desk.

“Guys— Guys!” she barked out. She could see Steve and Sam on the screen, turning to look in the direction of the hidden exterior loudspeakers. She cringed at the thought of her voice being broadcast into the woods. At least there was no one else around for forty miles.

“He’s fine!” she said loudly, as though she needed to yell out for them to hear her. “He’s— That’s Mateo! He’s good! Just let him do his thing! Sorry, Mateo! Oh, Jeez.” She said that last part as she was taking the mic away from her face. She pulled it back up to add, “Hey, just, um, why don’t you step back and I’m gonna close up the gate and we can start over, okay?”

Sam looked up at the camera and gave her a salute with his index finger, and he and Steve stepped backward away from the gate, making room for her to close it again. Before she did, she could see Mateo looking around and slowly taking his hands off his head.

Bucky was chuckling again, and Darcy said, “Hey, this is so totally not funny. The poor guy! Did you see him?” She instinctively reached out and smacked his arm, which, being the one nearest to her, turned out to be the metal one. It didn’t budge, and it felt like she’d smacked a bowling ball with her knuckles. She screeched, and made a fist with her hand, and then shook it, as if to shake off the pain.

Bucky immediately straightened up and backed away, as if spooked. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I—”

“My fault,” she interrupted, grimacing as she opened and closed her hand, trying to flex away the discomfort. “Lesson one: Don’t hit your buddy’s super cool metal arm with your dumb little hand.” She glanced at the security screen, where she could see Steve and Sam waving at her dramatically. “Aw, shit.”

She quickly checked the system’s computer screen for the code that Mateo had inputted, and matched it to the one in her phone’s email, and then did the gate-opening sequence again. “Jesus Christ,” she said, laughing ruefully. “I’m just fucking up all over the place today.” She held her sore knuckles up to her mouth and blew on them.

Bucky was still unsettled, standing apart from her. “You sure you’re okay?” he said. “Lemme see.”

She was going to protest again, but then he came in close and picked up her hand, and her words failed her as her heart stuttered and then accelerated. He was holding it in his metal hand while the flesh one turned it over to look at her knuckles, which were red, but the skin wasn’t broken.

“It’s cool,” she said softly, surprise in her voice. “I mean, the metal. It’s not warm.”

She could feel him pulling away then, but she held on, selfishly wanting to keep touching it, see how it worked. Each of the fingers was segmented multiple times, more than on a flesh-and-bone hand— probably to give it as much flexibility as possible with the rigid material. She ran her own fingers over it, fascinated.

“It’s, uh… titanium alloy,” he said, lowering his voice because of how close together they were.

“Does it heat up? Like, if you touch something hot or… you’re fighting or whatever?” she asked.

“It’s only weakly conductive,” he said. His breath was a little shaky, and she wondered if this was the most anyone else had touched his prosthesis since the bad guys… his handlers. It occurred to her that it was probably very pushy and intrusive for her to keep touching it without express permission, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. 

“What about where it connects to your skin? On your chest, your back?” She was speaking aloud, but it felt like a whisper, like the air between them was carrying the words from her mouth to his body. “Does it hurt? How does it—”

“There’s more metal inside… support system… connectin’ it to the rest of me… otherwise it’d rip right off. Took ‘em a while to get that right…”

She tried not to think too much about that macabre trial-and-error, while he added, “Most of it’s scarred up so bad there, though… nothin’ left to feel.”

He was so close, she couldn’t see his face, just felt the largeness of his body above and around her in the cramped room, which now felt more like a closet, with only their hands holding the distance between them. She was getting warmer, and her heart was still pounding, and she felt the impulse to move in even closer, slide her hand up to feel the metal of his arm, up to his shoulder, trace the lines of the plates with her fingers…

Before she could act on that totally inappropriate urge, they heard the bang of the front door, and the voices of the guys, and they both quickly separated from each other, looking in different directions like a couple of teenagers busted for necking.

“Darcy? Yo, Darce,” Sam was calling, and she looked up at Bucky, who was staring sideways down at the floor, breathing carefully through his nose.

“I’ll, uh…” she stammered, “I’ll just…”

“Yeah,” said Bucky.

She moved around him to get to the door, careful not to brush against him as she passed by. She floated on wobbly legs to the kitchen, calling out, “In here, Sam,” with a voice that sounded like a poor imitation of herself. She sank down into one of the barstools at the island, and stared at her sore right hand, turning it back and forth.

Her entire body felt electrified— like when he'd smiled in the gym, but cranked up to a level she couldn't so easily ignore; it was a physical response she was having to actively bring herself down from. If it’d been someone else she would have felt excited, anticipating the next encounter— but in this case, she had a feeling she should be putting the brakes on herself before she headed down a path of self-torture. As far as she knew, guys like Bucky Barnes didn’t fall for ordinary girls like her. Neither, it was safe to guess, did super-soldiers. She shouldn’t even be thinking about him this way; he was here to heal, not play spin-the-bottle with the hired help. 

Her thoughts were interrupted by an email notification. Not wanting to fuck up any more of her duties, she checked it right away: it from was Stark Industries, personnel department— instructions for activating permissions at the compound for a Dr. Christine Wells, psychiatrist, and notice of an intake appointment scheduled for the day after tomorrow. Confirmation was required. She held off, wanting to check with Bucky first. It was his brain, after all.

Sam finally shouldered his way into the kitchen, carrying a large cardboard box, which he thumped down onto the counter in front of her.

“It’s for you.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few people have asked when/whether we are going to get Bucky POV, and it suddenly occurred to me that I may have been cruelly misleading with my work summary, which is 100% Bucky POV, while the work itself is 99.8% Darcy POV. 
> 
> For anyone misled by my summary and hoping/waiting to get into Bucky's head, I am so sorry! :( We will only get about 400 words of Bucky POV in this entire fic. I hope you will keep reading anyway! 
> 
> I am grateful as always for all the readers, commenters, bookmarks, kudos etc. :)
> 
> \-----------------------------------------

“For me?” She pushed up out of the barstool to look at the package’s labeling. It had her name on it— Darcy Lewis, no address— as was true for all the special deliveries to the Redoubt. Only this time she had no idea what was in the box, or who’d sent it.

“Delivery guy said he was called for the pickup this morning, at the Tower,” said Sam.

“Did he say who from?”

“Nope. Said it came through the secure channels, though.”

Steve drifted into the kitchen now too, and he said, “Sorry we spooked your guy.”

“It was my fault,” said Darcy. “I was up super early, but I got distracted and forgot to check my mail.”

“Distracted, huh?” said Sam, and there was a smile in his voice.

“Sam,” Steve started to say, but the other man interrupted, still talking to Darcy.

“You gonna open it, or what?”

“All right, all right— jeez, hold your horses,” she said. She went to grab the kitchen scissors from the knife block on the main counter, and saw that Bucky was now leaning in the doorway to the kitchen. Seeing him there, watching her, reactivated the butterflies in her body, and she had to will herself to behave normally. She felt like a dumb kid with a crush, hyperaware of all her movements as she cut through the packaging tape.

She opened the cardboard flaps and stopped: there was a small white envelope sitting on top of the packing paper inside. She picked it up, lifted the flap, and pulled out the single, folded sheet of paper inside. She unfolded it and read it silently: “ _Hey, pretty lady. Couldn’t fly in the lasagne, but I bet you could do even better yourself with the right stuff_.”

“No way,” she breathed, forgetting everything else. “Oh my God. Oh, he didn’t.” She dropped the note on the counter and started pulling out the rumpled pieces of heavy brown paper that were layered on top of the contents.

“What is it?” asked Steve, and then he chuckled. “I can’t tell if you’re excited, or horrified.”

“Excited,” she said. “Definitely excited.” She started pulling items out of the box and setting them down on the island: cardboard boxes of noodles, jars of red sauce, a round plastic container of grape tomatoes, a purple onion, a bulb of garlic.

Sam picked up one of the jars, reading the label out loud. “Rao’s Marinara Sauce.” He looked at her dubiously. “We makin’ spaghetti?”

Darcy ignored him, pulling out another large container that was wrapped in some kind of insulated, padded foil. She opened it up and pulled out tubs of ricotta cheese, a large, cylinder-shaped hunk of mozzarella, and a big wedge of Parmesan, which she turned over in her hand, goggling at the price. “Holy shit; this is the good stuff.” She bit her lip. “I think he might’ve made the wrong assumption about my kitchen skills…”

There was a head of Romaine lettuce and a couple of Persian cucumbers. There was even a paper bag with a good half-pound of crimini mushrooms inside, and a generous cutting of fresh basil, carefully wrapped in paper towels. Finally, nestled into the sides of the box and protected by more layers of rumpled brown paper, she found two sleeves of fresh Italian bread. She held it up to her nose, inhaling deeply. “Clint Barton, I fucking love you.”

“Lasagne?” said Steve, looking at the box of noodles in his hand.

“I joked about flying lasagne in, before you guys got here,” she explained. I never thought he’d actually do it… even if we do have to make it ourselves…”

“You know what to do with all this stuff?” asked Steve.

“Yeah,” she said. “I mean, this is way nicer than how I used to make it, but I think I can figure it out. I’m gonna get started right away, take my time. It’s gotta be, what— two o’clock already?”

Sam checked his watch. “Two-thirty.”

“Can we help?” asked Steve.

She raised her eyebrows. “You like to cook?”

“Well, not really, but—”

“Nuh-uh,” said Sam, shaking his head. “Don’t let Rogers near the food— he’ll ruin it just by lookin’ at it.”

“Hey, I’m not that bad,” said Steve.

“Uh, yeah— you are,” said Sam. “Seriously,” he said to Darcy. “Don’t let him help.” Steve crossed his arms on his chest, pouting, while Sam continued, “I’d love to help, but I got some Skype appointments coming up. You mind doin’ it by yourself?”

“Yeah, no problem,” said Darcy. “I’m excited. And he sent nice sauce, so that makes it real easy.”

“Buck used to like cookin’,” said Steve. “Maybe he’d—”

They all turned to look at the doorway, but Bucky was gone. She’d been so excited by the contents of the box that she hadn’t even noticed that he’d left, or when. She flexed her right hand, which was hardly sore at all anymore— she hoped he wasn’t still feeling bad about it.

“Huh,” said Steve.

“It’s okay,” said Darcy. “What are you gonna do?”

“Sadly, I do have some actual work to do,” said Steve. “Gotta come up with a speech for a public appearance next week.”

“Yuck,” she said, sympathetically. “Well, if I don’t see you in the next couple hours, come on down for dinner around five, five-thirty.”

“Lookin’ forward to it,” said Steve. “Hey, do you know if Buck ever got any lunch?”

“No,” said Darcy. “He was in security with me when you guys were outside. Shit, did he seriously go on a six-hour run without any food? He must be starving. Should I take something over to him?”

“Naw, I’ll do it,” said Steve, moving around her to go to the fridge. “Despite what this one says—” He paused to roll his eyes at Sam— “I think I can handle makin’ some more sandwiches. And I’ll let him know there’s an open invitation for kitchen duty in here.”

“Okay,” she said. “Thanks.”

Sam and Steve got the rest of what they needed from the kitchen, and then left her alone with the array of lovely ingredients. She picked up the bundle of fresh basil, unwrapped it, picked off one of the tiny leaves, and held the wet, ripped end to her nose. It smelled incredible, like an Italian restaurant in the middle of a forest. She hoped she could do it justice, with her average-at-best cooking skills.

<<>>

She’d barely begun — she’d already spent over a half-hour just banging around in the cupboards, looking for appropriate pots, pans, and tools— when Bucky buzzed her to exit his room, and then a minute later wandered into the kitchen, carrying an empty plate from the lunch that Steve had brought him.

She’d almost panicked when she couldn’t find a pan to bake the pasta in, and was just backing her head out of a floor-level cupboard, ass in the air, metal baking pan gripped in her hand, when he spoke, startling her.

“Hey.”

She almost bashed her head on the ceiling of the cupboard, and backed the rest of the way out, sitting back on her heels.

“Hi,” she said, as she looked up at him, trying to give him a cheerful smile.

He looked freshly showered, hair still damp and tucked behind his ear on one side, and had changed into a pair of stylishly-cut jeans and a grey V-neck T-shirt that did little to hide his fit upper body. He looked like a fricking male model: objectively and effortlessly beautiful. Darcy, in comparison, felt like a troll, crawling out of her cupboard lair.

“Everything okay?” he said.

“Yeah.” It was her turn to blow hair out of her face. She’d pulled it back into a messy braid, and after all the mucking about in the cupboards, it was already coming apart, with stray pieces sticking out all over the place. She felt like a train wreck.

“Almost thought we were screwed; I couldn’t find one of these,” she said, holding up the large rectangular pan. “Thought we were gonna have to have lasagne soup, instead. Which, you know, can be awesome— I’ve had some kick-ass lasagne soup— but it’s not the same, and anyway, I don’t think we have any chicken broth, so, eh, maybe not. Anyway, I found one, so yay! Don’t have to come up with a chicken-broth sub for a third-rate lasagne hack…” _Holy fuckamoli, what are you even talking about. Broth sub? Lasagne hack? Stop it._

He stepped around her and put his plate in the sink, and then held out his flesh hand. She stared at it stupidly for a second, lips parted, and then realized he was just offering her a hand up. So, her suspicions were confirmed: the formerly brainwashed ex-assassin ‘murderbot’ was a gentleman. She reached up and grabbed his hand, pulling herself up, and then let go and put the pan on the counter.

“How, uh… how’s your hand,” he said. He was leaning against the counter, avoiding her eyes.

“It’s fine,” she said, and flexed it, drawing his gaze for a few seconds, and then she turned quickly away to pointlessly organize the other tools she’d gathered.

He was quiet a moment and then said, “I make you nervous.”

“No,” she said immediately, as she continued to stupidly line up the tools. Then, in a burst, “I mean, yes— but not for the reasons you think.”

He let that sit for a minute and then said, “What I think…”

She picked up the rotary cheese grater, twirling the handle, and said, “You know. The usual stuff. Your history…. Hydra.” She shrugged. “The arm.”

He instinctively rolled the fingers of his metal hand. “It doesn’t bother you.” He said it like he already knew it was true, but just didn’t understand why.

She put the grater back down, and started opening cupboards above the counter, looking for a big mixing bowl. “Should it?” She continued before he could respond. “I mean, if I’d seen anything that made me think, uh oh, this guy is bad news, then maybe? But I haven’t, so…”

“So you haven’t seen the footage. From Washington.”

“I have,” she said quickly.

He was quiet while she struggled to reach the big bowl on a high shelf— who put mixing bowls up high? She actually tried to jump for it, and he snapped out of wherever he was, reaching over her head to pull it down for her.

“Thanks,” she said, and leaned to grab a wooden spoon out of a ceramic utensil crock. She passed by him to move to the fridge, and got out a carton of eggs, and the two tubs of ricotta cheese. “You wanna help?” she asked.

“Uh… sure,” he said, caught off-guard, sounding uncertain. She was about to tell him he didn’t have to, but then he said, “I, uh… I haven’t done much cookin’ in a while, so you’ll have to… tell me what to do.”

“No problem,” she said. “Could you dump all the ricotta cheese in the bowl here?” She slid the two tubs over to him at the counter, and handed him the wooden spoon. “Mush it up.”

“So if it’s not… that other stuff, what is it then?”

“Huh?”

“You said… that I made you nervous, but…” He’d taken the lids off the tubs of cheese, peeled back the plastic seals, examined the contents, and then upended one of them over the mixing bowl, letting the cheese fall in.

“Oh,” she said. “Right. Um…” Her face heated up. Did he want her to actually say it?

She lifted the lid on the carton of eggs and took a couple out, moved a bit into his space to crack them on the lip of the mixing bowl, and let the raw egg slide in, on top of the cheese. “Dammit,” she said, leaning in to fish out a tiny piece of broken shell. She could almost feel his breath on the back of her neck.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he said. “It’s okay if—”

“Stir that up,” she said, interrupting him, as she moved away to dump the eggshells in the trash. She rinsed her hands under the tap, and exhaled as she wiped her wet hands on her jean shorts. “I think you’re still misunderstanding. It’s just—well, it’s kinda embarrassing, especially when I’m already making such an ass of myself—”

“But you’re not,” he said. “I don’t…” He sighed. Where Darcy tended to just blurt out whatever and clean up the mess afterward, Bucky seemed to choose his words carefully, taking his time. “I don’t know what you mean,” he finally said.

She grabbed a small blade from the knife block, and used it to rip open the plastic on the large piece of mozzarella. “I don’t know how to say what I mean, without…” She was going to say, _without making a fool of myself_ , but she didn’t want to imply that finding him attractive was foolish. She was pretty sure that anyone currently breathing would find him attractive.

“You’re like— really nice,” she said instead. “And I know that sounds awful, and no guy likes to be called, ‘nice’, ‘cause that’s, like, some serious friend-zone shit, but you just are. Not to say that we shouldn’t be friends, because, I mean, that’d be really cool and all…” _Seriously Darcy? God_ …

“And maybe I wasn’t expecting that, because… well, yeah. Because of stuff like the footage.” She rushed on, unable to stop now. “And then there’s the whole thing that you’re _extremely_ easy on the eyes, so yeah. There’s that.” _Stop. Talking. Now_.

Her face was burning, and she resolutely kept it pointed straight down, at the mozzarella, which she had started robotically slicing into rounds, even though she actually needed to grate it. She swore, with intensity, as soon as she realized what she was doing.

“What’s wrong.” He’d stopped his stirring, to look at her. She didn’t know if he’d heard— really heard— what she’d said, had figured out why he made her so nervous. She felt like she was twelve, handing a boy a Valentine’s card and then running off before the shame of rejection could take hold. Maybe they could just pretend she hadn’t said anything.

“I fucking started slicing the cheese, and it needs to be grated,” she said, flustered. “Where’d I put the other grater, the big one… I guess I can save the slices for the top…” She was muttering, and turning circles in the kitchen, making all the appearance of looking for something, without actually seeing anything. _Get a grip_.

“Here,” he said, holding out a box grater.

“Thanks,” she said, taking it from him. She set the grater on a large plate, and started shredding the rest of the mozzarella.

“I think this is done,” he said, indicating the bowl of ricotta.

“Okay,” she said, glancing over. “Um… can you put some plastic on it? Or a plate? And stick it in the fridge. Thanks.”

There wasn’t any plastic wrap sitting out, so he just grabbed a dinner plate from a stack in the cupboard, and set that on top of the bowl, and then moved it to the fridge.

“What now?”

“Um…” She stopped her work with the cheese, considering. “How about you clean and slice the mushrooms?”

He just stood there— maybe a little overwhelmed by that assignment— so she chunked it for him, giving it to him one step at a time. “They’re in the paper bag, over there,” she said. “I’d bet money that Mr. Stark has a mushroom brush that has never been used, but I won’t tell anyone if you just rinse ‘em off in water.”

“Does it, uh… will it matter?”

She was starting to relax again— the food prep was a good distraction. “Not to me. Maybe if they were gonna be in a fresh salad or something? I mean, I’m not a good enough cook to notice one way or the other.”

He was still looking at her dubiously, so she said, “We’re just gonna bake the shit out of everything anyway, so who cares. And I don’t see any kitchen police around, so…”

They worked together in comfortable silence for a while. Bucky found a colander, and he dropped each of the brown mushrooms into it, one at a time, after carefully rinsing off the little specks of dirt clinging to their flesh. He’d assumed a shoulder-width stance in front of the sink, his hips tucked to ground himself— she was definitely not checking out his ass in those jeans, which, with his long hair, gave him a sort of Los Angeles rock-n-roll vibe.

“So how come you don’t dress all grandpa, like Steve does?” she asked.

“What?”

“Your jeans. They’re hot. You study up on fashion while you were homeless?”

“Uh… no,” he said, answering her like it was a serious question. “Sam gave me these. They’re all I had clean.”

“Uh huh.”

He made a soft sound then, almost a chuckle. “Fashion’s changed a lot since…” He didn’t finish the sentence, but she knew what he meant, and after a moment, he continued on. “When Steve and I were kids, these kinda pants were for farmers… factory workers. They weren’t, uh… ‘hot’… whatever you called it.” He adjusted his stance and said, wryly, “They also weren’t this tight.”

“Well, Sam’s doing you a favor,” she said, and couldn’t help grinning.

“Girls… didn’t wear pants at all—only skirts— ‘less they were doin’ heavy work,” he said, avoiding the compliment. “What you got on right now…” He paused, and she saw him glance over at her legs, most of her thighs exposed in the cut-off jean shorts. “It, uh… woulda been scandalous…”

She snickered as she started opening drawers, looking for some plastic wrap to put over the grated cheese. “I know you’re not calling me a ho right now,” she teased.

“A what?” He was having trouble with his hair again— he was so tall that he had to tip his head way over to see his work at the sink, and his bangs kept falling in front of his eyes.

“Okay, I can’t take it anymore,” she said finally, and pulled the elastic off of the end of her braid— her hair was a disaster anyway, and she could just twist it into a bun instead.

“C’mere, crouch down, so I can reach,” she said. “I’m gonna stand sort of behind you, so don’t freak out.”

He did as she said, bending his knees a bit, to bring his head down closer to her level, still awkwardly holding his wet hands over the sink. She stood slightly behind him on his right, and made to reach for his hair, but he was still too tall, and he looked uncomfortable. “Okay, no; this isn’t gonna work. Go ahead and stand up.”

She dragged a barstool over and climbed up on it, which put her hands right where they needed to be. “That’s better,” she said.

He’d turned the water off, but remained at the sink, resting both his hands on the edge of the counter. He turned his head just slightly, so that he could see her with his peripheral vision, above him and slightly to his right. “What are you doin’,” he said, a little tense.

“I’m right here,” she said, just barely touching his shoulder on the flesh side with her fingers, and then with the rest of her hand, feeling the contour of his muscle through his shirt, and then she moved her other hand up to his metal shoulder, letting it sit there a moment so he could get used to her being there.

She felt a little thrill from being able to feel the metal part of his body again, even through a shirt. She was fascinated by it— the full view of it in the tank top had been a tease; she wanted to slip her hand under his sleeve, feel his shoulder without any fabric in between. She resisted, of course, humbled that he was trusting her to touch him at all.

She slowly moved her hands, one at a time, up to his hair, and began to gently comb and gather it together, her fingers dragging over his scalp. He sucked in his breath and she stopped immediately, her hands frozen in his hair.

“Too much?” she said.

“No,” he said gruffly, clipped. “Keep goin’.”

His hair was thick and dark and smelled like man-soap— something herbal and spicy, like aromatic cedar. She could see, over his shoulder, that his chest was rising as he breathed deeply. “Almost done,” she said.

She gathered the ponytail at the back of his head, trying to capture all of the misbehaving bangs, and then bent the tail in half before wrapping the tie around it, giving him a messy but functional man-bun. A few strands still escaped along the side, but it was better than before. Still mostly behind him, she slowly slid her hands back down to his broad shoulders and said, “How’s that feel?”

It took him a few seconds to answer, and when he did, his voice was soft. “Good. It’s—” He paused. “Thank you.”

“Awesome,” she said, removing her hands and clambering down from the chair. She heard him pull in another deep breath and then let it out slowly through his lips. She hoped she hadn’t pushed too hard, too fast, with all that contact. It’d been a pretty big step up from touching his hand.

She put the chair back, and then came around to the counter where he was still standing, leaning slightly onto his palms, his face still in profile. “You okay?” she asked again.

“Yeah. Let’s, uh… what’s next.”

She was twisting her own hair into a long rope, wound it up into a donut shape, and then pulled the ends through the hole, making a knot of hair that would hold for a little while. “Why don’t you slice the mushrooms up,” she said, “and I’ll get started on the noodles.”

He pushed off from the sink and turned to move past her, to get to the knife block, and when he did, she looked up, saw his face, and froze, her mouth open.

“What,” he said, slightly flinching back, startled.

It was the first time she’d seen his full face, without any hair in the way, and she was totally staring. _Stop it. You’re freaking him out_. “I, uh… it’s just.” He was waiting, nervous, clearly sure it was something awful. _Stop torturing him_. “I mean, obviously you’re super handsome and all, but… just… Holy cow.”

He turned his head, and she saw him swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

“I’m sorry,” she said, blushing. “I’m being a total weirdo.” She grabbed the Santoku knife and offered it to him. “Here. This should be good for the mushrooms. Or you can stab me with it if I keep ogling you shamelessly.”

That got his attention, and he looked at her full-face again, laughing in disbelief. “You’re really something,” he said. “You know that?”

“Oh, I know it,” she said. “Jury’s still out on whether it’s a good something, or a bad something, though. Time will tell.”

He took the knife and then the cutting board she held out next, and returned to his station at the counter. He put a few mushrooms on the cutting board and tentatively started to slice them, figuring out— maybe remembering— how to steady them with the one hand while the other deftly controlled the knife. His voice was soft when he spoke. “My vote’s for good.”

<<>>

They were parboiling the noodles in small batches, and then laying them out on long sheets of parchment paper on the countertop. While the first batch was boiling, they’d started sautéing the sliced mushrooms in a little olive oil. She’d been unsure what to do with the garlic bulb— they had way more than they needed for bread, and she’d always just used garlic powder, anyway— but Bucky had said, “Here, let me,” taking it from her.

“I think I remember…” He didn’t finish the sentence, but he pulled off a few cloves from the bulb, and she watched while he turned the knife on its side and used the flat of the blade to smash the cloves. “Yeah,” he said, “like that,” and then freed the raw garlic from its papery skin. He grabbed the salt shaker and sprinkled some salt on the crushed cloves before chopping them into tiny pieces.

“Wow,” she said, watching his movements, which were becoming more sure as he worked. “You’re, like, an actual cook or something.”

He scraped the minced garlic into the sauté pan and stirred it into the mushrooms, and a few seconds later the wonderfully pungent smell rose up into the air around them. He kept stirring while she returned to the noodle pot, gingerly fishing out some of the wide lasagne strips with a set of tongs, trying not to rip them. He was quiet, and when she looked over, he was standing in front of the sauté pan, eyes shut, unmoving.

“You okay?” she asked. She felt like she was saying that too much, but she couldn’t help it, feeling the need to check in.

“The smell,” he said, eyes still shut. “Reminds me of somethin’…”

“Hope it’s a good something,” she said, echoing their earlier conversation.

“Think so,” he said, and then, “Must be… you’d know if it wasn’t.”

“You want me to take over?”

“No,” he said, and opened his eyes again. “M’okay.” He gave the mushrooms a final stir and then turned the burner off.

“I guess we can add those to the sauce,” she said, nodding at the pan they’d dumped the marinara into. He tipped the sauté pan, letting the mushrooms slide into the red sauce, and then stirred it all together with the wooden spoon.

“You need me to do anything else?” he asked.

“Don’t think so,” she said. “Just one more round of noodles to go, and then we can put it all together.”

They both took a break while they waited for the last batch to cook, grabbing a couple of waters from the fridge and taking seats at the island.

“So,” he said, after they’d sat down. “Barton. He your guy?” His eyes were studying the label on his bottle.

She almost choked on the big gulp of water she’d taken. “Huh? No! God, no. I just met him.” _Not that that matters, if it’s the right person_ , her brain supplied, and then she immediately squashed that thought down and started rewinding in her head, trying to figure out what on earth had given Bucky the impression that she and Hawkeye were a thing. When had she even— oh. She supposed her excitement over the package could have been interpreted that way… and she’d walked him back to the Quinjet, alone, after the barbecue— not that Bucky’d even been around to see that.

“He’s not even my type,” she said. “I mean, he’s super pretty and all— I’m not sayin’ I didn’t look.” Bucky smirked at that, just a little pull up on one side of his mouth.

“He’s maybe like an older brother,” she continued. “Always wanted one of those. Not that I’d be looking at my brother’s ass. Eww.”

Bucky chuckled and leaned his jaw against his fist, elbow on the counter, as he looked at her. She had such a good view of his eyes now that she kept going back to them, his whole face open to her, but she felt like she was the one who was bared— as though he could see her attraction to him painted all over her face.

“I feel like a drink,” she said. She needed to get up, move— do something, before she embarrassed herself again. “You wanna drink? What time is it, anyway?” She glanced up at the clock on the microwave— 3:55. “Oh, crap. We gotta pre-heat the oven.”

She got up to do that, and fiddled around more in her head with his asking about Barton. She didn’t think he was just making conversation; most of what he said had purpose to it. Then, all in a rush, she got it: for the minimal time she’d known him, she’d been pretty flirty with him. Not in a gross way, but just in her typical Darcy way that he could have blown off as goofball friendliness, if he’d wanted to— like what she and Sam did: just playing around.

But they’d also had that quiet hour by the pool, after she’d seen his tears, and it’d felt unusually intimate for a person she barely knew— at least it had for her. And then there’d been the moment in the security room, that had felt like something else— more like heat… chemistry…

And then the package had shown up, and she’d flipped out and said— what was it? Oh yeah: _Clint Barton I fucking love you_. And the little note that she’d silently read, like it was private or something. She may as well have been dry-humping the delivery box, not five minutes after she’d basically been stroking his hand in the security room. Oh, God. She hoped he didn’t think all this— that she’d been toying with him, teasing him about his looks… flirting with him, fucking with his vulnerability. Touching him…

“You all right?” he was asking.

She realized she was just standing there in front of the oven, lost in her thoughts, and she swiveled around to look at him again.

“I was just thinking how I wish we had wine,” she said, fumbling for words. “I mean, I don’t know much about wine, but lasagne calls for red wine, right?”

“I don’t remember,” he said. “I know I still like beer.”

“Me too,” she said, grinning. Feeling naughty, and wanting to treat him, she gave him instructions on where to find the import beer fridge, and he set off on his mission while she took stock of the assembly line, trying to figure out what she was forgetting. She was trying to squash down the little secret part of herself that was still obsessing over his question about Barton… she didn’t think he was just asking to be polite. Which meant that…

She was grating the fancy Parmesan over a bowl with the rotary grater, when Steve appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Wow,” he said. “Smells great in here. Did Bucky ever come back?”

“Yeah, he’s totally been helping with everything. He must’ve been a pretty good cook before; once he got going… the way he uses the tools, it’s like watching a cooking show…”

“He was,” said Steve. “Learned a lot from his ma… and then when we were livin’ together… we were pretty poor, but he was always good at findin’ stuff to bring home, throw together. I think he enjoyed it. Maybe he will again.”

She heard Sam’s voice behind him say, “Outa the way, Rogers,” and Steve moved over so Sam could get through the door.

He stole a pinch of cheese from the bowl, and Darcy smacked his hand, making him laugh. “Thief,” she said.

“Is he takin’ a break?” asked Sam.

“No— I just sent him to get some beers. Why?”

“Just wonderin’ if you heard anything back from that doctor yet— the one Barton recommended. I know I only put in the request yesterday, but—”

“Oh shit,” she said, setting down the grater. “Yeah, they sent an email right before you brought the box in.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and thumbed her way to her email to pull it up. “So, yeah— I just need to confirm it, and we’re good to go— she wants to do an intake appointment, with all three of you guys day after tomorrow. I just wanted to get Bucky’s go-ahead on it, before I said okay.”

“Okay to what?” said Bucky. He was coming into the kitchen, holding three or four long-necked beers in each hand.

“You planning on getting’ me shit-faced, Sarge?” she joked, nodding at the mass of bottles.

“What? No,” he said, and he sounded so disturbed, as though she were seriously worried that’d been his intention, that she felt bad for saying it. “I just… I didn’t know what you liked, so…” He turned around to carefully set the bottles down on the counter.

“We should let you guys get back to work,” said Sam, elbowing Steve while Bucky’s back was turned. “Looks like you’re almost done; don’t wanna interrupt.”

“You’re not,” said Bucky, as he turned around. He leaned against the counter and shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. “Interrupting.”

“Nah, you guys gotta finish up this food. I just came to get some water,” said Sam. He moved to the fridge and grabbed a couple of water bottles, threw one to Steve, and then jerked his head slightly toward the door while looking pointedly at Steve. “We’ll get out of your hair.”

“What?” said Steve. “Oh. Yeah. Uh… see you guys for dinner. Smells great, Buck.” They shuffled out of the room, one forward and one backward, Steve almost tripping over his own feet, like the comic relief in a TV show. Darcy just stared at them as they went, and didn’t say anything for a moment in the complete silence that followed.

“Well, that was awkward,” she finally said.

“Was it?” said Bucky. “Guess I can’t tell the difference. Most everything… sorta feels awkward to me now.”

“Trust me, it was,” said Darcy. “So… what’d you find?”

He turned to look at the selection. “He had, uh… a lot of stuff I ain’t ever heard of… or maybe I just don’t remember. I tried to get a variety.”

She went over and read the labels, and quickly settled on the Stella Artois, since it was predictable, and not too strong. “I’m surprised he even has this,” she said, twisting off the bottle-cap. “It’s, like, the new Heineken.” She took a long drink of it, reflexively exhaling after she swallowed.

“I don’t know what that means,” said Bucky, watching her. “The new…”

“Just means it’s popular, easy to drink. Nothing crazy. Hey, you should have one of the Belgian ales,” she said, reading the label on one of the other bottles. “Nice and strong.”

“Yeah?”

“Does alcohol even affect you? Steve said he didn’t know.”

“Been talkin’ behind my back?”

“No! I mean— yeah, but just in context. It wasn’t like we were gossiping or talking shit about you or something. We were just… talking about how he can’t get drunk and… ” She looked over at him then, and saw that he was fighting a grin, teasing her.

“Oh, fuck you,” she said, throwing her dishtowel at him. His smile escaped then, sending a tingle through her body, and he caught the towel with his metal hand before it smacked him in the face. “You’re having this one,” she said, bringing the bottle over. “But you can’t drink it out of the bottle like a barbarian. I’m pretty sure you have to pour these into some fancy-ass glass, with the proper shape and all, so that you get the right… experience.”

“I don’t need any of that,” he said, picking up the bottle to examine the label himself. “Give me something else.”

“What do you like?”

“Don’t know. Somethin’ easy. Last thing I need is gettin’ stressed over the right way to drink a beer.”

“Hm. So maybe a pilsner or a lager… can’t really go wrong with those. Here, try mine.” She offered him her Stella, and he took it, put it up to his mouth and took a pull on it. She caught herself staring, watching as his lips were moistened by the liquid she’d just been drinking. He put the bottle down and he licked his upper lip, and then rubbed them together. She had that feeling again, like she should avert her eyes. The movements of his face… did something to her.

“Mmm,” he said. “Not bad. Yeah. Something like that.”

“Maybe the Peroni?”

“Am I allowed to drink it out of the bottle?”

“Hell yeah,” she said, moving to get the other bottle. “I don’t think the beer police are gonna get you for that one.” She tried to twist off the cap, but it had a real old-fashioned seal that required an opener.

“Beer police, kitchen police— seems like… a lot of police.”

“Welcome to the twenty-first century,” she said sardonically. “Everyone’s ripe and ready to judge anyone for anything.”

“Here, let me,” he said, as she was trying, and failing, to be cool and open the bottle using the edge of the stone countertop. When she handed it over, he used his metal hand to easily pop the top off.

“Oooh,” she said, waggling her eyebrows. “I bet you’re a hit at parties, with that trick.”

“Nice to know it’s good for something besides killin’,” he said. It was an unexpectedly dark turn, but it didn’t seem like he’d meant it to be. He saved her from fumbling for a response. “Thanks, by the way… for tryin’ to be so… I dunno. Normal. About the arm, and… well.”

She nonchalantly resumed assembling the pasta, giving him the space to keep talking, if he wanted to.

“Most people, they think…” He trailed off and then tried again. “Everyone’s pretendin’ it don’t even exist… tiptoein’ around like I’m gonna explode if anyone notices… but it’s the first thing comes up when they think I ain’t listenin’…” She glanced back, and he was looking at the metal hand, curling the fingers on it. “It ain’t like I got a choice about it. I’m stuck with this goddamned thing, unless someone can figure out how to get it off me.”

It was the most emotion she’d seen from him, openly, and she tried not to react to it— wanted him to know it was okay, that he didn’t have to hold back. “Is that what you want?” She twisted around to look at him again. “To take it off?”

“Maybe,” he said, looking down, into his lap. “I was gonna have Stark look at it. Figure out if he even can… ‘Course I messed that up…” He shook his head. “Beats the hell outta me why he’d wanna have anything to do with it… He knows what it did. What I did.” He took a long pull on the beer.

“What do you want it to look like?” she asked. “The new one?”

“I dunno. Normal, I guess.” He made a scoffing sound, and said, “But who am I kidding. I ain’t ever gonna be normal… not anymore.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. For one thing, he was right— and it didn’t seem like the time for some kind of pearl of wisdom, like _normal is overrated_ ; you don’t just say shit like that to someone recovering from trauma, even if it’s true. He had a right to want normal. He had a right to be angry, bitter, all of it.

What she really wanted, more than anything, was to give him a hug, but it didn’t feel like the right time for that either. Instead she just told him the truth: “Well, I don’t know if it’s the right thing to say, but for what it’s worth, I’m kind of fascinated by it. Like, I have to keep slapping myself to keep my hands off.”

He was quiet, and she didn’t know if she’d fucked up— maybe she was just as bad as Stark, inappropriately drawn to this thing that he clearly hated about himself… treating him like an object, something to study… which was not how she felt, at all. She broke the silence with something safe, neutral:

“I think this is just about ready to go in.”

“Yeah?” he said, a little shaky, trying to sound like he cared. God, he was still trying to be nice, right after she’d admitted that she thought the metal weapon the fucking Hydra monsters grafted onto him was neato-keen. He got up and came over to the counter, looked at the pan of pasta she’d finished. All the ingredients were layered in, filling every square inch of the pan, and she’d sprinkled the top with the remaining Parmesan and slivers of fresh basil.

“It looks great,” he said. “I can’t believe we made this.”

“Hey!” she said. “Speak for yourself, dork.” She was grinning, though, and saw him crack his own smile at her playful scolding.

She ripped off a big piece of aluminum foil and covered the pan, scrunching the sides down all around. “Can you put it in for me? It’s super heavy.”

“Sure thing, doll,” he said. Her stomach flip-flopped at the slip of the old-fashioned endearment. It sounded so natural coming from him, even though he’d said nothing of the type before. She wondered if he was even aware he’d said it.

She opened the door to the oven, and he picked up the pan and carefully slid it onto the center rack. She shut the oven door, and set the timer on the microwave for forty minutes. Her hair was starting to fall out of the bun she’d twisted it into, and she pulled it the rest of the way loose, shaking it out so she could re-do it.

“Now what?” he said, his eyes following her hands as she combed her fingers through her hair.

“Now we make the salad, and we can do some garlic bread, if you want. Do you like garlic bread?”

“Don’t know. Do you?”

“Hell, yeah. But I like the plain stuff, too. We have two loaves, so why don’t we do one of each. I’ll let you deal with the garlic, since you’re the chop-master.”

“Okay,” he said. And then, after a pause, “Hey, I’m sorry for talkin’ about that… the other stuff. Didn’t mean to… didn’t want to ruin…”

She’d just started slicing up a stick of butter to soften it, but she put the knife down and turned to look at him, where he was leaning against the counter. “You're not ruining anything,” she said. “Look— you don’t have to be— you have every right to be pissed off, or sad, or whatever. If you want to talk about… you don’t—” She shook her head again. “You don’t have to pretend it’s okay. Not around me, anyway.”

He was holding himself so still, even his breathing silent and controlled, and she thought to herself: _Now. Now’s the right time_. She took a step, timidly at first, unsure with her hands, and then she just felt herself go for it, as if watching someone else, moving in the rest of the way, wrapping her left arm around his midsection and the other up his back, along his shoulder blade. He was tall and solid and strong and she could feel the ridge there on his back, under his shirt— the seam where the metal met his flesh— and she ran her hand along it as she pressed the side of her face into his chest. She could hear his heart pounding, and his chest rose and fell, and her little hands grabbed at the fabric of his shirt, her own chest burning, hoping she wasn’t making a mistake, willing him not to panic and bolt.

He held his metal arm warily at her side, the fingers barely reaching out to touch her hip, as his flesh arm curved to reach a shaky hand to her hair, smoothing down its length and then moving to her back, holding her to him, accepting the embrace with an exhale. She felt him rest the side of his jaw on top her head, and then he took another shallow breath, her cheek riding the wave of his chest as it filled and released, and something about it made her sinuses sting, feeling his emotions moving through his body, into hers…

Everything seemed warm and liquid and hazy, and she suddenly felt unsteady on her legs. “I— I gotta sit down,” she said. It was weird, outright admitting how affected she was— but oddly, for once, she wasn’t embarrassed at all. She just felt like she was being honest— that she could say anything to him. She felt dizzy, like she was being pulled underwater— tugged down by a promise of a dreamy, melted sleep… and she was ready to say yes to it.

Ready to drown.


	8. Chapter 8

They'd finished putting the meal together, saying little as they moved around each other. Darcy had given him all the knife duties— slicing cucumbers and purple onion, mincing more garlic for the bread— as she'd cleaned and prepared the greens and tomatoes for the salad, riding a slight buzz not just from the beer, but also from the hug.

The lasagne had come out and was resting on the stovetop, while the garlic bread, wrapped in foil, had gone in. They’d wiped down the large modern dining table that sat— unused until now— at the other end of the room, and started putting stacks of plates and bundles of silverware on it. The clinking of the table settings must have been like a dinner bell, because Sam and Steve soon appeared, and wordlessly stepped in to help set up the places for the four of them.

“You guys want beer?” asked Darcy. “I’m sorry there isn’t any wine— well, not that I know of, anyway. There's probably a secret wine cellar under a trap door in the forest or something...”

“Whatever you’re having is fine,” said Steve.

Bucky cracked a couple more beers for the guys, and when the alarm for the bread started beeping, he stepped around Darcy to the stove, lightly touching her back with his hand as he passed her. He got out the bread while she dished the salad into four shallow bowls, and then she handed him a big serrated knife to slice the bread. She didn’t miss the way Sam was watching them move easily around the kitchen, following each other’s cues.

“Sam, can you see if there’s any salad dressing in the fridge?” she asked. “I totally forgot to check.”

He did as she said, pulling two unopened bottles out of the door. “We got balsamic, and some kind of sun-dried tomato thing.”

“Bring ‘em both,” she said, as she delivered the sliced bread to the table.

“I think we’re ready,” she said, hands on her hips. “Bucky, can you bring the pasta?” She walked ahead of him to the table, laying down a couple of folded dishtowels for him to set the hot pan on. She noticed he didn’t bother with an oven mitt; he just held the hot pan with his metal hand. _Another non-lethal use_ , she joked to herself, but said nothing out loud.

They positioned themselves around the table, finding places, and pulled their chairs back. Darcy felt Bucky come up behind her and put his hands on the back of her chair, indicating with a nod that she should take her seat. He carefully pushed in the chair as she sat, and she felt her face heat up.

She wasn’t sure why it flustered her— she was the only lady in the room, and she knew that in his time, before, it would have been no big deal. She supposed it was because she didn’t see herself that way— she was just one of the dudes, someone who didn’t need chivalry. It actually surprised her, how much she liked it— the feeling of being noticed, valued. Of course the person giving her that attention probably made all the difference…

Steve didn’t seem aware of any of it, already focused on loading up his plate, but Sam stole a glance at her and said a whole mouthful with one artfully raised eyebrow. She shot him back a ‘ _don’t you dare_ ’ look, and then busied herself with her napkin and silverware.

“Hey, everyone,” said Steve, once they were all seated. “Cheers.” He held up his beer bottle, and when Sam and Darcy leaned forward to clink theirs into it, Bucky picked his up and did likewise.

<<>>

She’d been sure they’d have leftovers for days, but as it turned out, the guys had no trouble finishing off a ten-pound pan of lasagne in one sitting. It was simultaneously disappointing and gratifying. All of the bread and salad was wiped out as well. It made the cleanup easy, which the men insisted on doing themselves, while Darcy relaxed at the island with a fresh bottle of beer.

After all the dishes were cleared and loaded into the dishwasher, and the fancy knives and wooden spoons hand-washed and returned to their places, Sam said something to Steve, and the two of them thanked them for dinner and then made some excuse to skedaddle, leaving Darcy and Bucky alone once again.

The dinner had a been a distraction— an hour of benign conversation with the other guys— but now that she and Bucky were alone again, she felt awkward, unsure what to say or how to behave. She didn’t know what this was… if it was anything. She needed time to think, to analyze. If Jane had been there, she’d have called a full-scale ladies’ ice-cream summit in her room. Even if she doubted Jane’s ability to be objective about Bucky, it still would have been nice to have someone to dump all her thoughts onto.

“Well,” she said, picking at the label on her beer, “this turned out to be a much nicer day than I’d expected.”

“Oh yeah?” said Bucky. He was wiping his hands on a dishtowel, and then he slung it over his shoulder and leaned back against the countertop, bracing himself with his hands, crossing his ankles in a casual, easy stance. It was such a natural, relaxed look that it startled her— in this moment, he almost seemed like a different person. Certainly not the shell-shocked man who’d arrived just a few days before. Or even the one who’d stepped into the kitchen, hesitant, three hours ago.

“I woke up so early,” she said. “Didn’t sleep very well. That usually means a shit day.”

“I haven’t been sleepin’ too well myself,” he said.

“Hey, uh… that reminds me.” She was reluctant to bring it up, especially when he seemed so relaxed for once, but she had to. “I don’t know if Sam told you, but Barton had a recommendation for some kind of therapist? A Dr. Wells I think? So, um… they just sent over an appointment confirmation request. It’s for day after tomorrow.”

He looked down, and then he pulled the dishtowel off his shoulder and turned around, threaded it into the handle of the oven door. He stayed there, facing away from her, his body tense again.

_Dammit. Relaxation mode ruined._

“I mean, you don’t have to,” she said, wanting to take the pressure off him. “Obviously, it’s up to you.” She was quiet, then— waiting.

He turned around finally, sighed, put his hands on his hips. “Yeah, but. I mean, the whole point of comin’ in, calling Steve… I made a decision. Wanted to see if I could… I dunno, find something better. Better than I was doin’ on my own. But now that I’m faced with it…”

She waited again, sensing he had more to say.

“Sometimes I just wanna go forward,” he said. “Try to leave all that stuff behind, as much as I can.” He lifted his flesh hand to rub at his scruffy jaw. “Everyone seems to think I gotta do it, though… do the talkin’ thing.”

“Well, who knows what she has in mind. Maybe you won’t have to.”

“Not likely,” he said, ruefully.

She’d been picking at the label on her beer, peeling bits and pieces of it off and letting the paper fall onto the counter. She didn’t know what to say— she felt like the therapist was probably a good idea— at least to try it— but she didn’t want him to feel like they were ganging up on him.

“Wasn’t thinkin’ about therapy, when I called Steve,” he said. “Mostly just wanted to do somethin’ about this thing, see about tryin’ to get an identity I could use.” He held up his metal hand, palm toward himself, flexing the fingers. “It’s kind of hard to get around, be with other people— gotta keep it covered up. I couldn’t get a straight job. And livin’ on the street… It was good for a while, gave me time to think… figure out what I knew, what I could remember… but I think after a point, it was startin’ to make things worse again… havin’ to steal, and…” He paused, synthesized what he was trying to say. “Didn’t want to hurt anyone. Sometimes that ain’t so easy, even if you don’t go lookin’ for it…”

“Did you know that Stark would be able to do something about it?” she asked. “Improve it, or… whatever?”

“No,” said Bucky, shaking his head. “I didn’t know Steve was gonna take me there… didn’t even know that much about—” He paused, and exhaled through his nose. “Howard’s kid. I didn’t really put it together until…” He trailed off, leaving it there, unfinished. “I guess I thought I could get someone to at least take it off. But now? I dunno. Maybe.”

“Well,” she said, still picking at the label, “if it means anything, I think it’s pretty ballsy. To switch things up, try something else. When you didn’t have to. I tend to be a pretty play-it-safe kind of person.”

He gave her a look that she could only interpret as skeptical, and she laughed, saying, “What?”

“Steve told me…”

She waited, and then when he didn’t continue, she said, “What,” again, a little worried now, though she was still grinning. “What did he say?”

He cracked a smile now too, and said, “He told me you got a taser, and that you ain’t afraid to use it. That you used it on one of the Avengers, even. That don’t sound like playin’ it safe.”

“That was one time!” she protested, and then, softening, said, “Besides, that’s different— I was freaked out. That’s not the same as having time to think about something and make a— an informed decision.” She paused, frowning. “Why was he telling you about my taser, anyway?”

“Not sure,” he said. “Knowin’ him, probably tryin’ to keep me outa trouble.” He looked at her for a minute, his eyes moving over her face, and then he reached up and pulled the hair-tie out of his hair, shook it out, and offered the tie to her.

“You want this back?”

“Nah,” she said. “Keep it. I got a million of them.”

“Okay,” he said, pulling his hand back and shoving the tie into his jeans pocket. “I, uh… I think I’m gonna go read for a while. Try to get to bed earlier tonight.”

“Yeah, I hear you,” she said. “I should do the same.” She gathered up all the little pieces of the label that she’d shredded, and stood up from her chair. “I think I’m gonna try to do some actual work in the morning, make sure I’m not responsible for any more colossal fuck-ups.”

“Okay,” he said, smiling a little at her salty language. He looked down and then moved his eyes up to her again, lips parted. She was just standing there, by the table, and neither one of them made a move to leave. He seemed to be hesitating, almost stepping forward, and then changed his mind.

“So I’ll see you tomorrow,” he finally said, making it a statement, not a question. “You, uh… you can go ahead and confirm that appointment for me, if you want.”

“Okay,” she said. She deliberately didn’t make a big deal out of it. “Thanks for cooking with me,” she said instead.

He ducked his head a little in acknowledgment and then swiveled on his shoe to go. He turned halfway through the door, looked back and nodded his head once more, and said, his voice soft, “Good night.”

<<>>

_It was dark in the dream, but she could still tell it was him by the scent of his hair and the rasp of his stubble as it dragged up the edge of her face; she could tell it was him just by the sound of his breathing— just him, like nobody else, those rhythms and sighs and parted lips. It was dark and close and there wasn’t any room to move but they were sliding against each other, a slow pull of limbs and skin, and his lips touched her behind the shell of her ear, and the air was was hot with his sigh and the sound of it, a hitch and release of wanting. She breathed as she felt his hand move down and cup her fully between her legs, and she filled with fire, spread from his hand, warming her there, pressing, and she wanted, and her lips fell open, his name a whisper, an oath, an asking, needing more…_

Darcy sat up in total darkness, tangled in her sheets, and cursed softly into the night: “ _Fuck_.”

She picked up her phone to check the time: it was barely past three in the morning. She slid back down under the sheets and closed her eyes, trying to get back to sleep, but she couldn’t get the dream, or its feelings, out of her mind, and she found herself replaying bits of their conversation from the kitchen… how the connection she’d begun to feel had seemed to build palpably in a matter of hours. She didn’t think she was imagining it.

She grabbed her phone again, and there in the dark, staring at the bright screen, she did a search for the D.C. footage. Most copies of it had been removed, but you could still find it if you dug around enough on Reddit or some of the more evil corners of the net. There were a few different versions, and she found one that’d been taken by some crazy person hiding behind a car about fifty yards away from Steve and the Soldier engaged in hand-to-hand fighting.

It was a very different experience, watching it now, having gotten to know both of the men involved, even though there was no resemblance between Bucky and the Soldier other than his hair, and the metal arm, the rest of him concealed in heavy tactical gear and a black face mask. He was a terrifying machine, swift and powerful— relentless— going after Steve with a knife, doing everything he could to kill him, and her heart pounded as she watched Steve save himself repeatedly from attacks that would have felled any ordinary man.

She wasn’t sure what’d made her seek out the footage again, but if it was to change her mind about the feelings that were spreading and already taking hold, it didn’t work. Not even a little.

<<>>

It took her a long time to focus at her computer the next day, the dream from the night before still woven through her thoughts and tormenting her with phantom aches. Not that she was kidding herself anymore how bad she already had it, but her body— her subconscious— was leaping _way_ ahead… and it wasn’t helpful. She got the impression that what Bucky needed was a friend— not some starry-eyed girl trying to climb on him. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do if she actually saw him before she got a handle on herself; with the way she was feeling, she might just burst into flame.

If she hadn’t woken so late, she’d have taken the edge off with her trusty vibrator, but once she’d finally gotten back to sleep she’d slept like the dead. Her phone had startled her awake well after eight, with the pulse of Bucky’s exit request, and she’d scrambled to yank her phone from the bedside table and put in the two codes, and then she’d reluctantly dragged her own body up to get ready for the day.

Steve and Sam came over to the work room to check in with her after breakfast; she updated them on the appointment, which she’d confirmed after Bucky had left the kitchen the night before. The paperwork for Dr. Wells had been straightforward. She’d been in the system before— she’d worked with a number of SHIELD agents, and had been re-cleared by Stark Industries after everything had gone to hell— so it was just a matter of activating her security permissions for the Redoubt, so that she could come for appointments without Darcy having to approve it every time.

They were all set for eleven o’clock tomorrow. She didn’t know why it felt like a ticking time-bomb to her— she didn’t even have to do anything, other than formally scan the lady in. She could only imagine how Bucky must be feeling.

“I think we should all be lazy by the pool today,” she said, swiveling away from her computer. “I don’t have any more work to do; do you guys?”

“Bucky wanted to spar a little after lunch,” said Steve, “but a swim would be perfect afterwards.”

“I’m down with that,” said Sam. "May as well enjoy it while we can."

“Cool beans,” said Darcy, but then she frowned. “I don’t know why, but I feel like the shit is about to hit the fan.”

“It’ll be okay,” said Sam. “It’s just therapy. People get all worked up about seein’ a shrink, especially the first time… like it’s gonna make or break you in the first five minutes. It ain’t like that. If the lady’s not a good fit, he doesn’t have to keep seeing her. It might take a bunch of tries to find someone he wants to work with. It’s tricky, given the confidentiality required in this case, but it’s doable. We’ll figure it out.”

Sam’s words— the simple truth behind them— were comforting, and helped her ease back on her anxiety a little. She hoped he’d given the same speech to Bucky.

<<>>

She wore her other swimsuit this time: a halter-top bikini with high-waisted bottoms, bright red with white polka dots. She did have to trim her bush for this suit, but it’s not like she had anything else she needed to do. She also changed her nail polish back to red— the shade was called _Tell Me About It Stud_. She didn’t want to think she was dressing with Bucky in mind, but after that steamy-ass dream? Who was she kidding.

She grabbed a towel, her sunscreen, and her phone, stuck her sunglasses on top of her head, and made her way down to the gym. She could hear the sound of the guys working out before she’d even cracked the door.

Steve and Bucky were on the mats on the far side of the room, working a boxing routine together. Bucky, his hands bare, punched and jabbed with tight, controlled moves, while Steve met him halfway with red boxing mitts. They were in loose black shorts and T-shirts, and both of them were barefoot. She was sure they’d heard her come in, but they maintained total focus on their routine, both of them breathing and huffing audibly, but without any sense of serious exertion. They seemed perfectly matched, their movements precise, and Darcy would have been content to forget swimming altogether, if she could have pulled up a seat and watched without bothering them. They were both beautiful to look at, their bodies doing the physical work they seemed to be built for.

She remembered what Steve had said about Bucky being a dancer before, and now she could finally imagine it: his footwork was natural, almost elegant, and she found her eyes drawn to what his feet were doing almost as much as his hands. But it was also her first look at the metal arm in action, and she couldn’t help staring, wishing she could observe it up close to see how the plates worked— to see if they adjusted as he moved, like they had in the water. She could see the power behind his strikes, but also that he was concentrating, holding back, and she wondered how much he had to pull his punches to keep from shredding Steve’s mitts.

After another minute, Bucky pulled up his hands, straightening out of his crouched stance, and Steve nodded to him, lowering the boxing pads. Bucky headed to the far corner of the room, where a pair of water bottles waited on a chair, while Steve strolled over to Darcy, pulling the mitts off of his hands. His breathing was still elevated, and his skin was shiny with sweat.

“Hey, Darce. You headin’ out?”

“Yup.” She held up the bottle of sunscreen, like a visual aid. “You coming?”

“In a bit,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. Bucky was faced away from them, tipping his head back to drink from one of the water bottles. She could see him rolling the fingers of his metal hand in sequence, like someone trying to bring feeling back after cutting off circulation. “We’re gonna work a little longer.”

“Kay,” she said. “See you out there.” She glanced to Bucky again, but he was still faced away. After what’d seemed like a new level of comfort the night before, she couldn’t help feeling a little stung by the distance he seemed to be creating, not even greeting her. Maybe she’d pushed it too far, with the hug, and he’d had a delayed response to it. _God, stop overanalyzing his behavior, for Christ’s sake. He’s in the middle of a workout_. 

She let herself out through the sliding glass doors, and headed over to one of the loungers to put on her sunscreen. She wondered if Bucky had ever hung out on the beach in Coney Island, back in the day… rubbed tanning oil on his dates, as an excuse to touch them. The idea of his hands moving over her bare skin made her flush and buzz with a warmth that traveled down her body, ending with an unmistakable ache between her legs… she thought of his hand there, like in the dream…

 _Fuck_. She was so doomed.

<<>>

“I was really hoping he’d come out,” she said to Steve, as she paddled around on the pink noodle.

“He may, yet,” said Steve, who was relaxing in an oval float with a mesh center that partially submerged his body in the water. Sam was napping under an umbrella— he seemed to be a master of taking a power nap at any time, a skill that Darcy had never learned. If she fell asleep in the middle of the day, it just made her feel worse afterward.

“He was actually really focused when we were sparring,” said Steve. “More than usual. It was… good.”

 _See?_ her brain said. _Not everything is about you, idiot_.

“I’m gonna go grab a bottle of water,” she said, ditching the noodle and climbing up the steps in the shallow end. She grabbed a towel off the lounger next to Sam. “You want anything?” she asked Steve.

“I’ll take a water,” said Sam, startling her. He was lying there unmoving, but there was no telling how long he’d been awake. “As long as you’re goin’ in to check on Barnes.”

Yeah, not fooling anyone. She grabbed her phone off the table and headed indoors, embarrassed that she was so transparent.

Her hair was dripping a little, but at least this time she had a towel, and she wrapped it around her body as she made her way through the house to the kitchen and grabbed a couple of bottled waters from the fridge. He wasn’t anywhere on that side of the property, so she headed back toward the gym again, wondering if it’d be intrusive to check his room. It’s not like the guy had curtains he could draw or anything.

The first door was standing open, and she went through, peering through the windows into his room, but couldn’t see him anywhere inside. She went over to the main door, which was propped open with the wood, and knocked on it lightly. “Bucky? You in there?” After a moment, she added, “It’s Darcy.” _Duh. Nice, one, genius_.

“M'here,” she heard him say, and then he was pulling the door the rest of the way open, holding it with his flesh hand as he used the prosthesis to tug a shirt the rest of the way down his chest. It looked like he’d just gotten out of the shower; she could feel the warmth coming off his body.

“Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to intrude.” She was holding the water bottles and using her arms to keep the towel pinned around herself, and she thought about the other time she’d shown up at his door in a swimsuit. He wasn’t turning away, this time. She didn’t know if that was thanks to the towel, or just a general shift in his comfort level. “Are you gonna come out?” she asked.

“Uh… maybe not,” he said.

“You don’t have to swim or anything,” she said, feeling like they were re-doing a scene in a play, but hoping to persuade him this time. “Sam’s not. He’s napping under the umbrella.”

“I, uh… kinda just want to be alone right now,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, unable to keep the disappointment off her face. “Well, maybe I’ll see you for dinner, then. Nothing like last night, sadly. It’s back to frozen rations again, indefinitely.”

“Maybe, uh… maybe we could find some way to cook again some time.”

“Yeah?” It took her completely by surprise— she’d automatically taken his antisocial behavior personally, assuming he was backing off, and it took her a second to adjust. “That’d be awesome. I mean, I don’t know how to make anything else like that, but I could look for some recipes online. What do you like?”

“Don’t know,” he admitted. “I’ll think about it.”

“Make me a list, if you think of anything,” she said. “And I’ll see about getting some ingredients delivered. Maybe we can make it regular thing.”

He reached out then, with the metal hand, his flesh one still holding the door open, and touched a lock of her hair, wet and curling against her shoulder. “You’re drippin’,” he said.

The feather-touch made her hair pull a little against the side of her ear, and she flashed again to the dream, his lips warm on her neck, and she shivered. “Sorry,” she said, feeling like she was frozen in place. She felt like her eyes were too big, her body too still, her legs useless, disconnected…

“You cold?” he said, his eyes moving over the bare flesh of her shoulders, her upper body, the curves of her breasts, pushed up by the suit...

“Yeah,” she said, almost whispering. She cleared her throat. “I, uh… I should go back out. I’ll, uh… see you at dinner? Maybe? Frozen fiesta?” She was backing out of the doorway. _Get away from the beautiful man_. 

“Yeah, maybe,” he said.

“Okay then,” she said, still backing up, and then she turned and fled, and heard him pull in the wood so that the door sealed up.

<<>>

He didn’t come to dinner, and this time Sam made up a tray for him and took it over. Darcy hoped Sam was able to ease his nerves about the appointment, if that’s what was bothering him. She spent the rest of the evening in her room, looking at recipes online, trying to find simple things they could make, hoping he was serious about cooking together. She re-did her nails yet again while she browsed the net— this time a hot pink base coat, with rainbow sparkles on top. Something fun to belie the anxiety she was feeling.

She slept late the next morning, as though by staying in bed she could delay the unfolding of the day. She knew he was already up and about; he’d buzzed her a couple of hours earlier. She hoped he’d at least been able to get some sleep.

She was nervous for him— but also, unreasonably, for herself. She felt like this thing that had started between them— whatever it was— was hanging by a thread, and that the slightest breeze could blow it over.

It was after nine by the time she’d showered, dressed, and made herself some toast, which she forced down like she was eating cardboard. To her surprise, somebody else had made coffee, and it was still warm in the carafe. She poured a cup and took it with her to the workroom, checked her emails, and re-confirmed the permissions for Wells’ arrival. Having nothing else to do, she picked up her mug, drinking down the dregs of the coffee as she meandered down to the gym, looking for Bucky.

He wasn’t there, and her phone app indicated that he hadn’t reactivated the doors since he’d exited that morning. She wandered back to the kitchen, and saw that Steve was now sitting at the island, eating a sandwich. The man was like a teenager: constantly hungry, eating three times as much as the other two guys.

“Hey,” she said. “You seen Bucky around?”

Steve held up a finger as he finished chewing, then his palm as he swallowed, and finally wiped his mouth with a little bump of his knuckles, and cleared his throat. “Yeah,” he said. “He and Sam went for a jog. Should be back any minute.”

“Okay, thanks,” she said, and was about to leave, when Steve stopped her.

“Hey, Darcy?”

“Yeah?” she said, pivoting back around.

“You and Buck…” He pinched his eyebrows together, choosing his words carefully. “You getting along okay?”

She just looked at him for a moment, blinking, and then walked back to the island, pulling a chair out for herself. She took her time, debating how to say it, and finally started with, “Is it gonna be a problem?”

“What,” he said. “Is what gonna… be a problem.”

“That we… I don’t know, get along. Or whatever.”

He was avoiding her eyes, and his reply sounded rehearsed. “I mean, it’s great that he’s talking more. Sam told me… it seems like Bucky is comfortable around you. More so than he is around him. Or, well. Me.” A second later he said, “And that it’s a good thing; that I should see it as… a good thing."

“Does it bother you?” she said, pressing. “I mean, I’m not saying he’s right. But is it gonna be a problem? If he is? More comfortable?”

“It shouldn’t be,” said Steve, hedging.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “But that’s not an answer.” She was being a little hard on him, but she wanted things to be clear, so she could stop it now if she had to, before she got in deeper… Steve was looking down at his plate, tapping one finger on the counter, and when he looked up at her, he looked so uncomfortable that she felt sorry for him.

“Hey,” she said. “What is it? It can’t be that bad.”

“I’m just… worried,” he admitted. “Can you promise me you’ll just…” He sighed, frustrated, like he had a limited number of words to work with, and couldn’t tell her want he wanted to say. “I’m just worried,” he repeated. “About him,” he clarified. “Look, we don’t know the half of what he actually went through, and—” He stopped, held her eyes. “Just be careful, okay?”

She sat back. “I’m confused. I thought you said I shouldn’t worry about him hurting me, or—”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” he said, looking at her.

She sat there, blinking, and then she leaned forward again, incredulous. “Wait— are you worried that— that I’m, like, gonna just … _mess_ with him or something? Is that what this about? Because that’s just… ridiculous on so many levels that—”

He put his hand up to stop her. “I— Darcy, I know you’re not—” He shook his head, and his face softened. “I’m really terrible at this. I’m sorry. He almost laughed then, but it was sad. “You know I saw him smiling, at dinner the other night— the night you guys cooked— and it was so… _him_ … it was almost too… for a while there, when we were eating, it almost felt normal, you know? Like everything might be okay. But I know it’s not gonna be that easy.”

“I know,” she said, relieved that he was finally just talking to her, dropping that little bit of aggression he’d come at her with. “I mean, I didn’t even know him before, but I saw it too. At this one point, I saw him relaxing, like… almost like this whole other person took over his body for a minute.”

“You saw Bucky,” said Steve, and it was so simple it was devastating.

She felt a wave of sadness move through her then, and anger as well, at what had been stolen from Bucky, what he’d been left to deal with, unfairly, forced to rebuild, to doubt, to fear. Instinctively, she reached out and took Steve’s hand. It was so big and warm, and softer than she’d expected, for all the fighting he did.

“I’m not gonna to do anything to hurt him,” she said, and when he looked up, she held his eyes, serious. “Not if I can help it. I’ll hurt myself, first.” The last part just came out, unplanned, with a fierceness that surprised her.

Something changed in his eyes then… like a kind of recognition, an understanding. He opened his mouth to say something, but shut it again without speaking.

She sat back and released his hand, assessing. “We good?”

Steve smiled sadly then, eyebrows squeezed together, and said, wistfully, “You kinda sound like him.”

“Finish your sandwich.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

<<>>

Wells was a little late. The vehicle-approach alarm went off at quarter after eleven, and Darcy and Steve went out front, to be the official greeters. Sam and Bucky had returned from their jog a half-hour earlier, and had hurried off to get cleaned up.

They could hear the car approaching, and then it appeared: a big, black Lincoln Navigator with Connecticut plates— probably a rental. Darcy opened the gate and then stepped back to stand next to Steve, out of the way of the circular drive.

“Why do I suddenly feel like we’re the help, waiting for the lady of the house to return?” Darcy joked. Steve snickered, and she realized that he was nervous, too.

The Lincoln pulled in and came around the curving drive, and when it got close to them, the driver’s side window rolled down. The driver, a ruddy-skinned man with aviator sunglasses, greeted them cheerfully.

“Good morning,” he said. “Do I park here, or…”

“Here’s fine,” said Darcy.

The driver nodded in acknowledgment, backed it up a bit, and pulled off to the side a little before parking. He turned around and said something to the passenger behind him, and then slid over to the seat next to him, moved it back, and pulled out a newspaper.

The rear passenger door opened, and a tall blonde-haired woman, who looked to be in her mid-forties, stepped out. She was wearing dark navy pants with a matching shawl-collar blazer over a silky ivory blouse; her black leather pumps added an extra three inches to her already considerable height. Her hair was loose in a professionally-styled shoulder-length bob, and she carried an understated mid-size black handbag.

Darcy wanted to find fault with her immediately, because yuck: boring business-wear— but tried to restrain her judgement. It’s not like the lady was going to show up in sweats and Birkenstocks, although Darcy probably would have responded better to that, if it’d been her therapist she was meeting.

Steve, ever the gentleman, stepped forward, holding out his hand. “Steve Rogers. And this is Darcy Lewis.”

“I’m Christine Wells,” she said, shaking their hands. “I’m sorry I’m late. It’s quite a drive.” She had a friendly smile and a steady voice, and, to her credit, didn’t make a big deal out of meeting Captain America.

“Please,” said Steve, indicating the front entrance and opening the door for her. She walked ahead of them into the building, her heels click-clacking on the tile in the entryway. The lounge was just ahead to the left, and Steve led her that way. Sam was already there, seated on one of the modern, low-profile leather sectionals, and he rose as they entered, offering his hand.

“Pleased to meet you, Dr. Wells. I’m Sam Wilson.”

“Please, call me Christine. I’ve heard good things about you, Sam.”

Sam nodded, acknowledging the compliment. “How was the drive in?”

Wells smiled pleasantly, and before replying, held out her hand again, gesturing to the sectionals. “Should we sit?” They all made themselves comfortable, and Wells continued. “It’s a long drive, but a nice one. Gave me some time to catch up on phone calls.”

There was an odd, lattice-like ball sitting on the coffee table, and Darcy leaned forward to pick it up, needing to fidget. It looked like one of those molecular models that people used in chemistry classes, with little plastic balls representing atoms, and their bonds with sticks. This one was a sphere, made entirely of dozens of black atoms connected together. She turned it around in her hands, playing with it.

Steve spoke up, doing Darcy's job for her: “Can I get you anything to drink? Bottled water? Coffee?”

“Water would be lovely; thank you,” she said. She looked around the room, twisting slightly to see the areas behind her. “Will James be joining us here, or…”

Darcy wondered for a second who ‘James’ was, before thinking: _Duh. James Barnes_. It still sounded weird and wrong— nobody called him ‘James’.

“He should be out soon,” said Steve, standing.

“That’s fine,” said Wells.

As if on cue, Darcy’s phone pulsed with an exit request, and she silently put in the codes to let him out.

“I’ll be right back with that water,” said Steve.

“Um,” said Darcy, standing up too. “I should probably do the thing, you know. The ID thing.” She put the molecule ball back on the coffee table. She felt slightly stupid, like a kid trying to hang out with the grownups. She found herself regretting the rainbow-sparkle nail polish. Wells, she noticed, wore no polish at all, her nails tidy and trimmed.

“Of course,” said Wells. She opened her handbag and rummaged around for a moment, pulled out an ID badge, and handed it over to Darcy. “I usually have this clipped on me, but for my private appointments I leave it off. It can create a barrier with some patients.”

“Do you mind if I take this with me for a minute? I just need to run it through the system, and then I can set you up with a smart card for the front gate. If all goes well you’ll be able to just swipe yourself in next time, as long as you’re on the schedule.”

“Thank you,” said Wells. “Please, take your time.”

Darcy turned to go, and in her rush to exit the lounge area, almost ran straight into Bucky, who had just come through the door from the gym. He was wearing grey sweatpants and a navy V-neck shirt that made his eyes pop. She put her hands up instinctively as she bumped into him, and then she rested them against his chest before quickly, awkwardly, putting them down. She felt a full-body frisson from the brief contact, and then gulped and said, “That’s like, the third time I’ve done that.”

He smiled a little at that, but he looked nervous. She wanted to give him a reassuring hug, but she restrained herself.

“I, uh… I have to go do this thing,” she said. “Work thing.”

“Okay,” he said, softly, looking at her. “See you later.”

“See ya.”

They sidestepped each other awkwardly, each going the same way on two separate tries before finally getting it right, which made her giggle, while his eyes crinkled in amusement. As she turned to leave the lounge area, she noticed Dr. Wells looking at her curiously.

<<>>

She got the badge sorted out fairly quickly; since Wells had been cleared already by two different agencies, she simply had to check the information and confirm it all still matched with the file she’d been sent earlier in the week. Once it all checked out, she generated a new smart card for the front gate, and linked it to the system so that she could pre-approve it on the days Wells was scheduled to be there— which looked to be almost daily, for now.

She finished up with the card and returned to the lounge, but found it empty, save for the molecular sphere and a half-empty bottle of water. Evidently they’d moved somewhere more private for the interviews. She tapped the badge against her leg, considering. It didn’t seem appropriate to go sniffing around for them. Therapy was definitely a private affair, and none of it was, frankly, any of her business.

She was considering going up to her room to get a book, when she heard the chime for someone opening a door to go outside. A few seconds later, the gym door opened, and Sam came out.

“Hey,” he said. “She’s all done with me and Steve; she’s gonna talk to Barnes alone in his room for a bit, and then call it a day. Pick it up with a longer session tomorrow.”

“Okay. Where’s Steve?”

“Out on the patio. Might go for a walk.”

“He okay?”

“Oh, yeah. I think he just gets, you know, a little protective of his boy in there. Not easy for him to let go, let someone else do the drivin’.”

“So… what do you think of her? I mean, if it’s okay to ask.”

Sam pressed his lips together for a moment, considering. “Too soon to tell,” he said.

“Uh oh,” said Darcy. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” said Sam quickly. “I think that’s a real smart lady in there. Just don’t know if she’s the right fit for our guy.”

“Oh,” said Darcy, unable to keep the disappointment out of her voice. “But he’s still gonna give it a try, right?”

“I think so,” said Sam. “Seems like it.”

“Good.”

“Hey, you wanna get some fresh air?”

“Sure,” she said.

They went back through the gym, and out the sliding doors to the patio, and walked around the edge of the pool to the lawn. Steve was nowhere to be seen; he’d probably walked around to the other side of the property.

“So….” said Sam, falling into an easy walking pace, “You guys got a hot date later?”

“What?” said Darcy, sputtering a little. “No,” she said, making it sound ridiculous. And then, “I mean, I don’t think so. Why? Is there some reason you might think… I do?”

Sam laughed. “Hey, no— I’m just messin’ with you. Bucky just may have mentioned, on our jog, that he was gonna see you after his appointment. Sounded like he was lookin' forward to it."

“News to me,” she said, trying to sound unaffected by this information.

“Uh huh,” said Sam, nodding his head with mock sincerity.

Darcy looked over at him and saw his face, smacked him in the chest. “Oh, shut up.”

Sam grinned, but then stopped and said, “Hey, I just want to say… for real... I think it’s great that you and Barnes… that he’s findin’ a way to talk to someone. Not a doctor, but… a friend.”

Darcy smiled but then she saw something in Sam’s face and she practically rolled her eyes and said, “But?”

Sam relaxed his face then, and he put a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, no. You don’t gotta worry; I’m not gonna tell you to back off or anything. Just— take it slow, okay?”

Darcy put her hands on her hips, pacing in a circle in frustration. “God, what is it with you guys? You and Steve, you’re acting like I’m some kind of Jezebel or something, gonna throw myself at him and, like— _devour_ him or something. It’s not like that.”

She looked back at Sam then, and saw the humor in his face and said, shoulders slumping, “Okay, it’s sort of like that, but I’m not gonna _do_ that. Jeez…” She sighed and was serious for a minute. “I know he’s not just some regular guy, Sam. I’m not stupid.”

“Nobody said you were,” said Sam. “But there ain’t any rules for this… ‘specially when we don’t even know what all the man went through… and what we do… it’s bad. Just— go slow, be safe… listen and… check in with him a lot.”

“I’m already doing all that,” she said, softly. “Just seems… natural.”

“There’s those good instincts I was talkin’ about,” said Sam, his face kind. He started walking again, and Darcy fell into step beside him. When he picked up the pace into a light jog, she kept up, but after a minute she complained, already breathless, “Hey, didn’t you just take a jog?” Sam just grinned and kept going, and she pushed herself to keep up.

In spite of the good-natured ribbing and his easy manner, Sam’s little talk had set her obsessive thoughts back into a swirl, and by the time she was escorting Wells back out to her driver in the early afternoon, Darcy was so worked up that she wasn’t sure whether she was desperate to see Bucky, or too nervous to even look at him.

She didn’t get a chance to find out, because she didn’t see him again for three days.


	9. Chapter 9

It had nothing to do with her. She kept telling herself that. Didn’t change the fact that she was fretting about it. _Give him space_ , she said. _You’re not his handler. You’re not his teammate_. Her brain, it seemed, was very good at telling her all the things she was ‘not’. _You’re not his girlfriend_. In spite of all those reminders, he’d hooked into her, and she couldn’t stop thinking about him. 

If she were a weaker person, it would have been easy enough to engineer ways to ‘accidentally’ bump into him— the property, while huge compared to anything Darcy had lived in before, was nevertheless limited in common areas— kitchen, lounge, gym, pool. She found it odd that she hadn’t even seen him coming or going for food. It didn’t mean he was deliberately avoiding her, though. Right? He was probably already dealing with some super heavy shit in his therapy, and she needed to respect that.

Dr. Wells had chosen the safe room, with the privacy it afforded, as their primary place to meet and work, so it was natural that he was spending most of his time down there. Accordingly, Darcy had been avoiding the gym, not wanting to ambush him, since that was his only access point to the rest of the property. If he didn’t want to see her, she wasn’t going to force herself on him.

At first she’d obsessively checked the padlock app, monitoring his ins-and-outs after buzzing him free each morning, and had finally resolved not to check on it anymore unless he needed her: it felt too pathetic, too desperate. But the longer she went without seeing him, the more intentional it began to feel, and in spite of her best efforts to be mature about it, she found that her feelings were hurt.

The days were monotonous: wake up, buzz him out, check the schedule and confirm Wells’ arrival, kill time in the work room or outside. She finally found some relief in her inbox, in the form of a massive data dump that Jane needed her to organize. It wasn’t difficult work, but it required a level of focus and discipline that her brain was desperate for. If this was how the days were going to be, maybe she _should_ go ahead and join Jane at the Tower. At least there she would have plenty of distractions, and stop moping around about Bucky Barnes.

On the fourth day— which was a Sunday, and a day off from therapy— she was walking the inside perimeter of the wall around the compound, just to get some fresh air, when she spotted him, finally, some distance away, across the yard. He’d apparently been walking or jogging as well, but it looked as though they’d been unknowingly headed in converging directions. Now he’d stopped, and was pacing in small circles on the grass, head down and hands on the hips of his sweatpants. He was too far away for her to guess at his expression.

She almost did an about-face, to buy time or maybe just flee the confrontation. The avoidance, whatever the reason for it, had built up to the point that she didn’t even know how to acknowledge it. She supposed she ought to just leave it alone— leave him be— as he seemed to want. But he had to have seen her, and now it felt like the next move was hers: turning away at this point would feel too much like an aggression, a ‘ _fuck you_ ’ when what she really wanted to say was, ‘ _are you okay_ ’ or even, ‘ _I miss you_ ’.

She didn’t feel at her best— she was in ratty grey running shorts and a purple jog-bra that gave her a bad case of uni-boob— but she hardly cared; she held up her hand to show she’d seen him, and then started to walk over, all of her cells tingling with nervous energy.

He’d stopped pacing as she got closer, but he kept his head down, just glancing over to her a couple times like he was nervous too. She hated knowing that she was the cause, and wondered what she’d done wrong. _Go easy_ , she thought, but of course her mouth took over as soon as it could.

“So,” she said, when she got within arm’s distance. “You avoiding me?” She winced internally at how pissed off she sounded. She'd known the guy a week, and she was already acting like a psycho girlfriend.

He kicked at the ground a little before making eye contact. “’S’not like I want to,” he said.

 _Explain_ , she wanted to say. Instead, she kept her mouth shut, her hands on her own hips now, trying to play it cool. She wanted to assure him that she wasn’t trying to be some crazy stalker, but she didn’t know how to justify the pull she was feeling in any rational way.

“It’s just—” He stopped, made a frustrated sound. “Miz Wells thinks… it’s probably not the best time for me to… make things confusing.”

“Oh,” she said, and she felt it like a punch to the gut, because apparently he agreed with the doctor. But then she heard herself say, like a total smart-ass, “So you can’t have friends, or what?”

He looked at her again, and she couldn’t read what he was thinking, his eyes giving her no clues. “Is that what we are?” he said. “Friends?”

She dropped her arms and said, “Well… we’re not _NOT_ friends… right?”

He didn’t say anything, and she felt her face burn. There was no dignity in this conversation. She covered her discomfort the way she usually did— with jokes, to pretend it didn’t matter.

“So what does this mean?” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Are we not allowed to hang out? Are Sam and Steve gonna tell on us if we get caught whispering out by the bushes?”

He laughed then— just a short, soft chuckle— and when he spoke again, it was less tentative, like he’d relaxed some too. “Sam ain’t here.”

“True,” she agreed. “But he’ll be back in a couple days, and he’s already proven that he’s super nosy. And what about Steve? He seems like the tattle-tale type to me.” It was actually the opposite of what she thought of Steve, but falling into this kind of banter around Bucky came so naturally, she couldn’t seem to control it.

“We’ll have to watch our backs,” he said, low. “Come up with a code or somethin’.”

She giggled with delight, and all the remaining tension of the past few days melted away, just like that. It was a little scary, the highs and lows she was feeling: he’d tied her up in knots like she hadn’t felt in ages, and then released them instantly, just with a smile, the rumble of his voice as he played along.

He looked to the side for a second, and then at some unknown point over her shoulder. “You, uh, wanna go for a walk or something?”

It was a serious question, not part of their joking around, and she was thrown for a moment. “Really?”

He tipped his head slightly backward, at an angle, indicating the general direction behind him. “Those woods are pretty big… I’ve covered a lot of the territory. There’s a path, for a little ways…”

“Are you kidding me?” she said. “I’ve been wanting to get in there for weeks, but Jane’s allergic to nature if it’s not up in the sky, and I’m too afraid of serial killers and meth-heads to go by myself. Or, you know, finding a body or something.” She dropped her voice into a tone like a TV news reporter: “ _Hikers on Sunday made a grim discovery…_ ”

He laughed again, just another little one, and she thrilled at the way it made her feel— that she could do that. Like one little pixel of his worry mask fell away, revealing something else underneath… although it occurred to her that maybe she shouldn’t be joking about dead bodies around him. She had no idea what sort of things haunted his nightmares.

“Just give me a minute, okay?” she said, stepping backward, almost afraid he would vanish once she turned her back. “I wanna run inside and put on some long pants and a shirt. Don’t wanna get eaten alive by ticks.”

“Sure,” he said, and she gave him a big smile and then turned and jogged back to get some clothes.

<<>>

They went out the back gate and down the path to the landing zone, and beyond that, it was another fifty yards over ankle-length grass and clover to the edge of the forest, which stood like a wall around the property. From a distance, there was no obvious point of entry, but Bucky knew his way to the trailhead, if trail you could call it— it was little more than a thin line of dirt and trampled ground cover, maybe a couple of feet wide, snaking off into the undergrowth. It turned out it wasn’t too far from the arrows Barton had shot during his archery demonstration; they were still sticking out of the tree trunks, and served as a good marker once you got close enough.

They made their way into the shelter of the trees, and as the colors changed from the sun-blasted landscape of the exterior to the shaded earth-tones of the wood, there was a noticeable drop in temperature. Darcy tipped her head back, breathing in deeply with her arms outstretched.

“Oh my God,” she said. “It already smells so good.”

Bucky smiled at her enthusiasm and then started kicking through the brush at the side of the trail, slightly bent over, looking for something. He leaned over finally and fished out a long, nearly-straight stick, almost shoulder-high to him, and about two inches in diameter. He plunked the end of it down on the trail, holding it slightly to his side, like a spear.

“Nice stick,” she said, bouncing her eyebrows.

“Don’t get any ideas,” he said. “Took me a while to find this, last time I was in here. You gotta find your own, sweetie pie. Hiker’s code.”

Darcy couldn’t help smiling at the flirty language— it was so unlike the guarded side of him she’d mostly seen so far, but at the same time, it felt completely natural coming from him, like it fit. She wondered if that was Bucky Barnes, circa 1940s, sneaking out again. She gave him her best sassy look in response.

“Don’t worry, Sergeant Barnes— I wouldn’t dream of touching your stick.” She walked ahead of him down the trail, and could almost feel his grin as he followed her. After a minute of quiet walking, she said, “I feel like we’re playing hooky from school or something. I was getting so cooped up in there…”

“You tell Steve where you were goin’?”

“I didn’t go out of my way looking for him,” she admitted. “But I did leave him a note, in the kitchen. Wanted him to know I’ve got my phone, in case he needs me.” She frowned. “Don’t know if it’ll work too well in here, though.”

“Lotta variables,” he said. “Wouldn’t count on it.”

“I feel like we’re gonna be in trouble when we get back,” she said.

“You changing your mind?”

“No way,” she said. “I’m just saying, Steve has this way of making me want to keep that look off his face, you know? You gotta know the face I’m talking about.”

“You mean the one where it’s like someone told him Christmas was canceled?”

“Yes!” she said, giggling. “Like, his eyebrows get all bent up like this.” She turned around to face him, slowing her pace as she stepped backward, almost tripping on a root. She did an exaggerated imitation of Steve’s sad-face, crinkling up her eyebrows and pushing out her lower lip in a pout. “I swear to God, he did that the other day when I told him I ate the last of the chunky peanut butter.”

Bucky let out an easy laugh, but then he said, “Yeah…. I’m very familiar with that look. Think I’m the cause of it, most of the time.”

“Are you kidding me? That guy loves you more than lemon meringue pie.” _D’oh. Don’t out Steve_. “I mean, you’re his best friend.”

They crunched along the path for a bit before he replied. “That’s the thing, though,” he said. “I mean, I’ve read enough about him to know… I ain’t that guy. Not anymore. Wishin’ it ain’t gonna make it so.”

She realized that by ‘him’, he’d meant the Bucky Barnes in the history books— referring to his past self in the third person. She was quiet a minute, and then said, carefully, “There are some little things, though. These moments… like a word, or the way you do something… I mean, obviously I didn’t know you before, but… well, that stuff didn’t come from a book.”

“That’s just scenery, though.” He’d stopped walking, and she turned, stopped to listen. “Do you know how weird it is, readin’ stories about some guy who’s got my face?” He looked up, into the leaves above. “I can’t tell, sometimes, if a memory I’m havin’ from before is real, or if it’s just somethin’ I read about. Not like it matters either way. That guy— he ain’t comin’ back.” He started walking again, and she fell in beside him, but he slowed to let her gain a little ground, so that she was slightly ahead of him on the path.

“Does it bother you?” she asked. “I mean, that you can’t… that you don’t feel like you’re him?” It felt odd to talk to him like that, facing away from him while he came up behind, but she wanted him to be comfortable. She glanced back for a second, to see if he’d heard her.

Bucky was quiet, walking, marking his way with his stick. Finally, he said, “Makes me feel bad that I can’t be who he wants me to be.”

“You mean Steve?”

He answered after a moment: “I owe him.” He said it like it was a fact, not up for debate.

She thought about that for a while, watching the trail ahead of her feet, stepping around roots and stones. “So pay him back by figuring out how to be happy. As the man you are now. I mean, I think that’s really all he wants— to see you happy.”

She stopped and tilted her head back again, shutting her eyes and inhaling dramatically. “God, I wish I could bottle this.” When she opened her eyes again and looked at him, he had stopped too, and was just standing there, looking off to the side, but unseeing, far away.

“It’s a lot to ask,” he said finally.

“What, bottling up the forest?” she joked. She knew that wasn't what he meant, but she didn't want to fill in the blanks for him, now that he was talking. She bent down to grab a stick, but it was too short and thin for a walking stick, and she threw it back. She kicked through the brush, looking for another one.

“I mean... bein’ happy,” he said. Darcy was still deciding whether to respond to that, when he asked, “Are you?”

She turned to face him again— he was still standing in the same spot. She said, “What, am I happy?”

“Yeah.”

“I am right now,” she said, and she smiled, because it was true. She felt happy there with him, just the two of them, nobody else around, no expectations. He didn’t say anything, and she dropped her arms and elaborated. “You mean in general? I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, not really. My life has been kind of fucked up the past few years, and I don’t really know where I’m going and my job is pretty lame. I mean, don’t get me wrong— I’m glad I even have a job, and I get paid really well for not a lot of actual work, so.”

“But it’s not what you want,” he said.

“Dude, I don’t even know what I want,” she said. She was moving in a loose circle around him now, off the path, still looking for sticks. He remained where he was, motionless, but she could feel him keeping track of her.

“I mean, that’s the real question, isn’t it,” she continued. “I’m jealous of people like Jane who know exactly what they want and then they just have to go out and get busy doing it. Like, I’m not afraid of work. But I just— I don’t know. I haven’t figured out what I’m here for yet, I guess.” She gave up her search and swished back through the brush to where he was standing.

“You’re seriously not gonna let me borrow this?” she said. “Just for a little while?” She reached out to grasp his walking stick, a couple of hand-widths below his own grip on it. She pushed out her lower lip in a pout like the sad-Steve face, and he chuckled at her, which caused her to break her sulky face and smile back— it was impossible not to.

“Better not,” he said huskily, and started walking again. “People might get ideas…”

“Can’t have that,” she agreed, and after she fell into step with him, he let her go ahead once again.

“Who’s Jane,” he said, picking up the other topic. He must not have remembered Steve mentioning her, when they were introduced. She wondered how out-of-it he’d been, those first twenty-four hours after moving over from the Tower. Compared to now, she realized how close to shut-down he’d been when he’d first arrived.

“Jane’s my boss— well, Stark Industries is officially my real boss now, but I don’t take many orders from them; I mostly just do what Jane needs me to do. She’s a scientist, and I’m like her assistant: I crunch her numbers, organize her data, keep her alive— that sort of thing.” The path was sloping downhill, and she could see it ended at a small stream at the bottom of the hill. She cautiously made her way down, and stopped at the edge. “I guess she’s also my best friend,” she said.

“Where’s she at now?” he said.

“She’s out on loan, at the Tower. I wish she’d come back.”

“She stayin’ away because of me?”

 _Ugh_. She didn’t want to lie, but she hated confirming his suspicions.

“I wish she could meet you,” she said instead, avoiding the question.

She stretched one of her legs out to hop over the stream, but misjudged the distance and teetered back, slightly stepping back into the water, but then found her balance, and brought her rear leg safely up to the opposite bank, turning around to face him as she did. He’d put out his metal arm to catch her, if she’d slipped, and now he dropped it, and easily bridged the stream himself in one big stride.

“Where to now?” she asked. The path had ended on the other side of the stream, and it was all untouched forest ahead of them.

“Wherever you want,” he said. “We won’t get lost.”

“Okay,” she said, and started up the hill away from the stream, and into a more densely wooded area, Bucky following behind.

“Anyway,” she said, “Jane is like— I think she’s known since she was eight or something that she wanted to study the stars. You know? Like one of those people you read about.” She looked back and dropped her voice again, to mimic a narrator: “ _Little Johnny started piano at age six, and the rest is history_ …”

The corner of his mouth ticked up at her little act, and she continued: “And for Jane it’s been, like, this direct path to where she is now, and she’s just so smart and amazing, and everyone respects her and… I don’t know. I wish I felt that way about something. Data entry is not, like, my life passion.”

She stopped and bent down to pick up a pine cone, and stood, turning it in her hands, and then held it up to her nose to smell it. It was sticky, and she dropped it back into the brush and wiped her hands on her pants. “I was in therapy a while, after the whole thing with Thor and Loki—”

“Thor?” he asked, interrupting.

“Yeah, like, God of Thunder? Son of Odin?”

He was standing there, looking at her like she was nuts. “That’s real?” he said incredulously, and then turned his head to the side, lost in thought. “I read some things about Steve’s team, but… I thought it was just… I dunno, a metaphor or somethin’.” He shook his head. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by anything at this point.”

“Okay, so that’s a different long story,” she said, “and by the way, he’s the one I tased…” He looked back at her again at that, eyebrows raised. She could tell he was impressed.

“But anyway, his psycho brother sent down this huge robot thing that destroyed a town, and I totally thought I was gonna die, and SHIELD was nice enough to give me and Jane free therapy after, ‘cause, you know, obviously we were both completely fucked in the head after that, and they needed to make nice with Thor.”

He was just watching her, leaning on his stick a little. “So,” she said, “My therapist would ask me stuff like, ‘ _What would make you happy, Darcy?_ ’” She’d dropped her voice again, for the quote, and she could see that he was enjoying them, all the little impressions she did. “And I’d be all like, ‘Fuck if I know, lady, isn’t that your job? Like, to sort my shit out?’ And of course, that was the whole point, right? She asks the questions, but I gotta sort it out myself. So, I guess I’m still doing that. Sorting it out.”

Bucky was still standing there, holding his stick, but he was looking toward the ground again, and he seemed to be a million miles away. Finally he took a big breath, like he was preparing to deliver a speech.

“I got a feeling,” he said, “maybe Steve thinks if we all just try hard enough— if I do the talkin’ thing, and work on my memories, and you know, eat enough hot dogs— that everything will come back to me, and it’ll all be like it was before. He thinks— I guess he thinks that’ll make me happy, too.” He kept his eyes averted, like it was easier to talk if he could direct the words to the leaves.

“But that’s just stupid,” said Darcy, and he looked up at her then, laughing a little, like he was surprised by her bluntness— she supposed not too many people outright called Captain America an idiot. And she didn’t think he was, but even she could see that in this case Steve was being short-sighted, and worse, that his good intentions were actually doing harm— to Bucky and to himself.

“No, I’m serious,” she said. “That’s just dumb. I mean, nobody can go back.” She frowned, thinking about it. “And he should know that better than anybody, really.”

She started to slowly walk again, and he straightened up and followed. “Maybe he’s just stuck right now,” she said, “Living in the idea of it, like a fantasy. Like, he’s in denial. I mean, you gotta admit, it’d be like a fuckin’ fairy tale, if you both cheated death and survived all these years, and then came through on the other side and just picked up where you left off, kickin’ ass with your BFF.”

“What’s a … BFF?”

“It means ‘best friends forever.’” She looked back at him and deadpanned, “Well, it can also mean ‘big fat fuck’, but that was not my intended meaning.”

Her joke pulled another chuckle from him, and his blue eyes were sparkling, and she started a new mental list, right then and there: _Things That Make Darcy Happy… Item number one: Bucky’s face when he smiles_.

He held her eyes for a moment, and then he stopped and licked his lips and said, “Hey, uh… I mean, thanks for talking to me about all this stuff… I didn’t mean for it to get so personal. I don’t… you know…” He made a noise, frustrated by his clumsy communication, and just said, “Anyway… thanks.”

She flashed him a big, genuine smile. “Any time, Bucky Bear.”

“Oh, God,” he moaned dramatically, and she grinned even wider, loving that she’d pulled yet another playful emotion from him, one she hadn’t seen yet. He started walking again, and said, “Please tell me you didn’t have one of those.”

“Sadly, no,” she laughed. “I wanted one so fucking bad, but they were collector’s items way before I was even born.”

Another groan: “Jesus, like I don’t already feel too old for you.”

“How old are you, anyway?” she asked, trying to pretend like his comment hadn’t excited her just a little. “I mean, how do you even measure it?”

“When I was at the Tower… the doc there said there were some things they could do… some DNA thing… but I didn’t wanna do that; didn’t want people pokin’ me any more than they already were, takin’ samples and all that. Don’t need to know that bad.”

Darcy noticed that no matter her pace, Bucky maintained that staggered distance from her, keeping himself slightly behind her and to the side. She kept instinctively trying to slow down a bit so they’d be more side-by-side, making it easier to talk, but whenever she slowed, so would he, adjusting to keep her in front of him. She wondered if it was a tactical habit he couldn’t shake, or if talking was easier for him that way. Or maybe he was just checking out her ass. She’d be perfectly fine with that.

“The books say I was twenty-eight when I fell, so… you figure… couple years they took trainin’, buildin’ me… kept me frozen when they weren’t usin’ me… best guess I could make would put me at around thirty-three, thirty-four… give or take…”

Darcy listened as he reported the information with little emotion, a history that amounted to decades of torture and slavery, and the theft of almost everything he had been, rattled off like a sidebar in a history book. It made her want to stop right there and pull him into a hug again, but he seemed to be working very hard to keep a physical distance from her. She didn’t know the reason for it, but she wanted to respect it.

“Well,” she said, trying to keep her voice lighter than she felt, “I’m twenty-seven, so… not that far apart. Unless you go by your birthday. Which makes you, what— ninety-something?”

“He woulda turned a hundred in March.”

“So… you do anything to celebrate the big ten-oh?”

He laughed. “Hell, no. I woulda still been on the street back then, livin’ in some rat-hole; didn’t keep track of the days like that. I don’t even— that’s not my birthday no more. That’s some guy on the wall in a museum.”

She stopped walking and turned around to face him. “So you should pick a new one.”

“Nah… I don’t need that,” he said, brushing it off.

“Yeah you do,” she said, moving closer to him. “If for nothing else than an excuse to have a big-ass slice of cake on a day you’d normally be eating boiled broccoli or something.”

“You could do that any day,” he said, but he was smirking at her humor, in spite of himself.

“It’s not the same,” she said, and took a risk, tapping him in the chest, to punctuate the thought.

He looked down to where she’d touched him, and then back to her eyes. “Okay, then how ‘bout today.”

“Why today?”

“Why not? Don’t matter either way, so…”

“But we don’t have time to get a cake or…”

“Okay, so one month from today.”

“One month. All righty.” She whipped out her phone and scrolled to her calendar, making him groan again.

“Why do I feel like I’m gonna regret this.”

“Quiet,” she snapped. “Thinking here. Okay… so that would make it… let’s see… what day is today. I totally don’t even know. Oh shit. Nope; no can do— that would make it September eleventh.”

“Why’s that no good?”

She looked up at him. “You know— nine-eleven? Oh, man— you were probably asleep for that. But you must’ve read about it? New York? The Twin Towers?”

“Oh, right… the thing with the planes.”

“Yeah…” It was odd to hear it reduced to such a bland description. “For people who were, uh… who were there, or even saw it on TV while it was happening…. yeah, no. That can’t be your birthday, if we get to choose. A friend of mine, from high school? Her brother had his birthday on nine-eleven, and it totally sucked. It’s like that date has been totally wiped out for anything but remembering, and feeling shitty. I mean, the Battle of New York— even that date doesn’t have the same weight, because, you know, we _won_ … and it was like, freakin’ aliens coming out of the sky, and humans banding together to stop them… it was _inspiring_ … whereas nine-eleven… that was just… the ugliness of humans, killing other humans…”

“Yeah, I know a little bit about that,” he said.

She didn’t know if he was talking about World War II, or the blood on his hands from his days in Hydra, but she didn’t want to steer in that direction, not right now… “So anyway,” she said, “nine-eleven— that’s out.”

“Okay, then how ‘bout the day after.”

“September twelfth?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding her head as she considered it. “Yeah, that could work— then we can have cake to look forward to, after feeling shitty the day before. Or is that totally fucked up and disrespectful? I don’t even know.”

“Well, I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I woulda been okay with the eleventh.”

“Let’s just say it’s not.”

“Okay then.”

“I’m marking it down,” she said, tapping on her phone. “September twelfth. It’s a date.”

She finished and closed the app, and slipped the phone back into her pocket. When she glanced up, he was looking right at her, his face relaxed and his lips slightly parted. With the filtered light and the lush backdrop of greens and browns behind him, his chiseled features and loose dark hair… the way his flesh hand grasped the sturdy walking stick, while his other, metal limb hung down at his side like a magical artifact… he looked like a hero from a medieval fable, come alive through some form of conjury.

It was very still, with just a light twittering of birds somewhere overhead, and a soft rustling of leaves, high up in the canopy. It felt like time had slowed down to a thick heartbeat and it was just the two of them, sheltered for miles in the refuge of a private cathedral, guiding them to this quiet moment.

She was staring again, her heart pounding, and she almost didn’t care. Almost. Because… ‘ _not the best time…. make things confusing…_ ’ She remembered what she’d said to Steve… that she’d hurt herself first…

She swallowed and looked away, breathing in the deep loamy smell of the damp forest, and then started walking again, crunching softly on the fallen leaves and branches that littered the ground. After a moment, she heard his own careful steps fall in with the sound of hers, until they blended together with the other murmurs of the wood.

<<>>

They’d walked a good hour through the trees, mostly silent after that, just enjoying the ambient sounds of the forest. For someone who was prone to babbling, she was finding an odd peace in simply stepping between the trees with him… being more aware of the things uncovered when she wasn’t working so hard to fill up the space.

She still hadn’t found a suitable stick, and it had become an obsession, causing her to stray farther from him to search through the thicker underbrush. She kept sighting the ends of fallen branches sticking out, beckoning to her, and she’d tromp over to them in glee, only to mutter in disappointment when the limb proved to be too brittle, too bent, or, in some cases, just too damn heavy.

On one such foray, in a rush to get to the next candidate, she messed up her footing, slid sideways on a slippery root, and went down hard into a mess of leaves, dirt, and branches.

“ _Ow!_ ” she screeched out, and then, “Fucking hell.”

She was more embarrassed than hurt, or so she thought, until she stood, brushing the twigs and leaf-bits off her front and sleeves, and then took a step back toward Bucky, who was coming to her quickly through the underbrush.

“You all right?” he said, just as she stepped forward, and she knew he didn’t miss the way she immediately backed off from the step, swallowing a wince.

“Hey, seriously, you okay? You hurt your leg?”

“I think I just twisted my ankle a bit. It’ll be fine in a minute. It’s more like my ego that’s suffering.”

“You sure? Looked like it hurt to put weight on it.”

“I’m fine; see?” She shuffled a couple more steps back toward him, hopping her way through each step that required her right foot to bear any load.

“Doesn’t look fine.”

When Darcy continued to stubbornly hop-shuffle her way past him, he hooked her by the arm, stopping her. “Hey, hey, hey. No. Sweetheart. Just stop.”

“I am _not_ going to participate in some stupid twisted-ankle trope,” she complained, still trying to hobble away. “Gimme your stick; I can use it as a crutch.” 

“I don’t know what you’re on about, but you’re not walkin’ out of here on that ankle,” he said. “Maybe it ain’t so bad now, but it will be if you keep doin’ what you’re doin.”

Before she could open her mouth to argue, he’d scooped her up, hefting her once to adjust her position, so that one arm supported her back, while the other curved under the backs of her knees. She could feel how effortless it was, as though she were made of air, and he held her comfortably as he turned and began to step back through the brush in the direction they’d come from. He was being very careful with his metal hand, which was resting against her ribcage just under the curve of her breast.

The feel of his strong arms supporting her body, and the way the position moved her in a wavy rhythm against him as he stepped, flooded her body with a tingling warmth, obliterating any lingering embarrassment over her inelegant tumble. She wanted to sink into him— his warm, manly smell, and the heady pleasure she felt, being wrapped up in his body— and she suddenly realized what a judgmental idiot she’d been for looking down on romantic stereotypes. The truth was, if you were the one participating, it felt fucking amazing. Still, she made a point of groaning loudly in protest, as her dignity required:

“God, this is embarrassing. Jane can _never_ hear about this.”

He just grinned as he walked, and she smacked at his chest with the back of her hand. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“What’s not to like?” His grin increased. He was breathing easily, her weight obviously not affecting him at all. “What did you mean before, about— what was it? You used some word I don’t know. Like you were sneerin’ at it.”

Held against his chest, she could feel the rumble of his voice when he spoke, and it added another element of sensation to the effect he was having on her. She pushed the feeling down as she flipped back through her own words in her head, and tried to keep her voice nonchalant, neutral.

“You mean ‘trope’?”

“Yeah,” he said. “What is that.”

“Oh, you know… like something that happens over and over in stories to the point that it’s just stupid and everyone’s sick of it, or it’s just silly. Like, you know how fairy tales start with ‘once upon a time’? So, like, the first person who did that was onto something, but then everyone did it, and if you started a story like that now, people would just think it’s a joke.”

“So twistin’ your ankle’s a trope?”

She laughed. “It is if I did it to move things along.” He looked down at her, smirking, and she growled, “Which is _totally_ not what happened— it was a fucking accident!”

She rolled her eyes. “I mean, for fuck’s sake, a twisted ankle… and now the bridal carry! Jane’s got a mental checklist of scorn for crap like this whenever we watch a movie. Like that one where the lady rolls down the hill, and the guy rides up through the mists and he has to, like, gently remove her shoe and palpate her ankle with his manly fingers, and she’s practically coming in her pants just from that alone.”

Bucky bit his lower lip in a smile, and she could feel him trying not to laugh. “Sounds good. What happens next.”

“Oh, he scoops her up, much in the same manner of scooping that’s going on right now, and takes her safely home.”

“Uh huh. And do they live happily ever after?”

“Fuck, no,” she said with indignation. “Turns out he’s a total asshole. He dumps her for some rich lady and she spends the entire rest of the movie crying into her hankie.”

“Sounds like a putz.”

“You can say that again. Anyway, if Jane ever finds out I’ve fucking done my very own goddamned historical re-enactment of that shit-sorry scene, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Bucky tipped his head back laughing, and then looked down at her, a wide smile on his face. “You’ve got quite the mouth on you, you know that?”

“Yeah; why? Does it bother you?” She was still pretending to be grumpy, but all of it— his arms around her, his easy laughter— she felt like she was in a dream.

“Nah, I like it,” he said. “So this twisted ankle thing— does it ever work out?”

“I guess so,” she said, “but there’s no dignity in it; I mean it’s just a ploy to get the guy to put his hands all over her, you know? Like, ‘ _oh no, I’m hurt; please save me!_ ’” She said it in a mocking, sing-song voice.

He hefted her again, even though she was obviously weightless to him. “So’s that your plan?” he teased.

“Obviously,” she said, and then snorted. “I mean, look at you— it's working.”

Bucky was still grinning, staring straight ahead as he stepped, and he spoke in a low voice, with a humored solemnity. “Too bad Steve’s back there ready to rat on us, if he sees us tryin’ to make good on that plan.”

“Yup; it’s too bad. Guess we’re both just gonna have to take lots of cold showers.”

Bucky grinned again. “Guess so.”

They were joking around, but underneath there was a parallel current, a barely-there truth that they were playing with, and it was giving her way too many bad ideas. _Slow_ , she reminded herself. _Take it slow_.

All of a sudden her face dropped. “Hey, your stick! You left it back at the crime scene.”

“Don’t matter.”

“Aw, but it was your special stick! It’s just sitting out there now, all alone in the woods.”

He looked down at her fondly. “It’ll be fine. I’ll go back for it some other day.”

“You’ll be able to find it again?”

“Sure. Got these woods pretty well mapped out in my head.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Been out here a few times, walked or ran most of the territory. Made some marks.”

“Is that like… a super-soldier thing? Mapping memory?”

“Maybe. Could be. Or could be somethin’ I was trained to do. Can’t seem to help it now.”

She’d been holding just a bit of tension in herself since he’d lifted her up, trying to resist the urge to fully sink into the cradle of his body— because that would be too awesome, like being embraced by him— and she squirmed and tried to adjust herself to maintain that little bit of distance her defenses required, but her neck was getting tired, and she couldn’t sustain the effort any longer, so she finally relaxed into him completely, letting her head rest against his broad chest.

“All right, I give up,” she said, letting out a dramatic sigh. “Just— seriously, don’t tell Jane, okay?”

He looked down at her with a soft smile, and then back to his route ahead, keeping an even, steady pace through the green.

<<>>

“Shit,” he said, as they came around the corner by the back patio, and saw that Steve was sitting out there, an unread book closed in his hand. “Guy’s probably been sittin’ there all afternoon, waitin’ on us like a nervous Nellie.”

“What happened?” Steve jumped to his feet as soon as he saw them, and started jogging toward them. “Darcy, you okay?”

Darcy was saying, “I’m fine; it’s nothing,” at the same time that Bucky interrupted Steve with, “Outa the way, Rogers. Lady with a twisted ankle.”

“Not one _word_ of this to Jane,” Darcy barked out, as Steve stepped to the side to let them pass.

Bucky turned sideways to maneuver Darcy’s legs past Steve, explaining, “She don’t like playin’ the damsel in distress.”

“Wouldn’t think so,” said Steve, smirking.

“Both of you, shut up,” said Darcy. “Take me to the kitchen,” she commanded. “I think there’s some ibuprofen in there, and I can put some ice on it.”

“Yes ma’am,” they both said in unison.

<<>>

She did ten minutes on, ten minutes off with the ice pack, over the next hour, her ankle elevated on another barstool and cushioned by a throw pillow that Bucky had grabbed from the lounge. Steve, for his part, had located a bottle of ibuprofen for her, and then left to go work out in the gym. He’d obviously been a lot more worried about them than he’d let on, and now that he knew they were okay, needed to go burn off the leftover nervous energy.

“I think I’ve had enough,” she finally said, leaning forward to remove the ice pack again. She pulled the ankle toward her, bending her leg at the knee, so that she could probe the cold flesh. She circled her foot a few times in both directions, and bent it up and down.

“Seems okay,” she said. “But you’re right; I would’ve been fucked if I’d walked home on it. Thanks for carrying me.”

“Pleasure was mine,” said Bucky. He was sitting with her at the island, drinking a beer, and making sure she finished all of the water he’d fetched for her. He’d been unusually quiet since they’d gotten back, and it was starting to worry her, because she suspected she knew the reason.

“So…” she said finally, wanting to get it over with, “What now?”

“What do you mean?” He took a deep swallow of beer and set the bottle down, drawing lazy circles with its base in the condensation on the countertop.

“I mean, do we get to hang out again? Or was this a one-off thing, because, you know…” She trailed off, frustrated. She’d almost fallen back on a joking tone again, but this wasn’t something she wanted to make light of. “I don’t want to do anything to mess up your, you know…. your work.”

“Yeah,” said Bucky, and let out a big exhale. “I don’t know.” He made a few more circles with the bottle, gazing at it sightlessly, and then stopped, let it stand still. “I mean, I wanna see you. I wanna do what feels… right to me.”

“It feels like there’s a ‘but’ coming,” she said.

“But,” he said, nodding, and raising his eyebrows, “I’m tryin’ to trust this doctor. I mean, she’s the professional, right?”

“Yeah,” said Darcy, softly. She stretched her leg back out again, setting her ankle on the pillow, and said, “So what do we do?”

He’d been staring down at the counter, not making eye contact, but now he looked up at her and said, “So I think maybe we gotta keep our distance, at least for now.”

She gave him a small smile, though it was forced. “Okay,” she said softly.

“I’m, uh…. I’m gonna go take a shower, I think,” he said.

She tried to pretend she wasn’t deflating, but her eyes betrayed her, so she went for a joke instead: “Cold one?”

He blew a laugh through his nose and said, “Maybe.” He stood up and walked around the island to where she was sitting, and leaned down, cupping his hand behind her neck, and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. She felt it spread out like electrical current, traveling all over her body.

“See ya later, doll.”

She gave him another sad smile in response, but he didn’t see it, having already turned and walked out of the kitchen, without looking back.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shit's about to get real...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: attempted self-harm  
> \---------------------------------

On Monday, the compound felt eerily quiet. Sam was still away, visiting a friend in the city. Steve was holed up in his room, trying to get his speech done. He’d confessed to Darcy that he hated public speaking, but considered it an important part of the job, and took it seriously.

She was busy with her own work, still deep in the pile of data that Jane had sent over. She’d woken early, determined to focus on her job, instead of on the intriguing man living down the hall. She wanted to be there for him— as a friend— when and if that became appropriate again, and she just needed to put away those other feelings… her instant attraction to him, the chemistry she didn’t think she was imagining. Too bad that was easier said than done.

She rolled back her chair and went over to the system panel in the work room, jabbing at the glowing buttons to pull up the music selection screen. It was all Mr. Stark’s heavy-metal barf music, and she picked a playlist at random, turning up the volume, loud.

Stark had some kind of state-of-the-art audio setup that made it feel like the sound was consuming you from all angles, something far more advanced than the typical rich-guy surround-sound system, relying on dozens of integrated speakers hidden inside the walls and the ceiling. The lounge and even the safe room had the same system, though Banner had never bothered to program in the ambient music he preferred (or maybe Stark had been a butthole and refused to allow it). She and Jane had had fun screwing around with the intercom, though, during their first week there— turning the volume all the way up and saying things like, “ _Whosoever provides the coffee, if she be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor_ ,” which made no sense at all, but still made them laugh like the dorks they were.

She wondered if Stark would be open to Bucky picking some music… _No, no, no— stop it— stop thinking about Bucky_.

The heavy-metal music was an obnoxious, angry wall of sound— the perfect antidote to her impossible lovesick fantasies. Satisfied with the selection, she went back to her desk and got to work, awash in an assault of AC/DC, Black Sabbath, and Metallica.

<<>>

She’d noted the arrival of Wells, as usual, around eleven o’clock, and was just getting back to work after a late lunch at one-thirty, the music cranked back up to max volume, when she felt a tap on her shoulder and almost jumped out of her own skin. She swiveled around in her chair to see Dr. Wells standing there, in her high-heeled professional perfection, a friendly smile on her face.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” said Darcy. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

“Sorry,” said the other woman, her voice raised to be heard over the music. “I tried knocking, but— well…” She gestured at the ceiling. “It’s Darcy, isn’t it? I hope I’m not bothering you.”

“Not at all,” said Darcy, pulling off her reading glasses and then rising to turn down the music— she’d made it through three playlists already, and was starting to think that Stark’s musical taste wasn’t so ridiculous after all: she hadn’t thought about Bucky Barnes for almost four hours.

“This won’t take long,” said Wells. “I was hoping you could help me with something I need for my work with Mr. Barnes.” _Well, so much for that_.

“Sure,” said Darcy. “Pull up a seat; I’ll help however I can.” She reclaimed her task chair, while Wells dragged Jane’s over and sat down close to Darcy. Compared to Wells, Darcy felt like an unprofessional child in her knit shorts, faded rainbow T-shirt and flip-flops. At least she’d ditched the hot pink nail polish; she’d kept it on for days, but had finally removed it the night before and had felt too glum to apply a new shade. She tried to sit up a bit straighter and assume a manner of someone who knew how to do things.

“So here’s what I need,” said Wells. “There’s a technique I’d like to test-run, but it would require that I take certain precautions, for him and for me, and he actually suggested we use the intercom for the room. So that we could speak to each other, without his having to feel threatened… or concerned for my safety. He said that you would be able to set that up for us.”

“He suggested it?”

“Does that surprise you?” asked Wells.

“A little, yeah,” said Darcy. “We had a, um… incident when he first got here. Steve activated the intercom overnight, and everyone could hear him. Like, having a nightmare. He was pretty upset.”

“Ah,” said Wells. “That’s understandable. If anything, then, it’s even more gratifying that he suggested it.” She paused. “I understand it was his wish to use the room— he seems to take everyone’s safety very seriously.”

“Yeah,” said Darcy. “Steve was against it, but Sam seemed to think it was a good idea— I mean, just for privacy too.”

“Sam knows what he’s doing,” said Wells. “Is he still in Manhattan?”

“I assume so. I thought he was gonna be back today, but looks like he’s extending his stay. Guess the visit went well.” She waggled her eyebrows suggestively, and Wells allowed a soft chuckle.

“So anyway,” said Darcy, “You just need to enter your code, and then you can access the secondary functions on the panel.” She’d swiveled to her laptop, bringing up the program she needed, glancing to Wells as she discreetly inputted her password. “I’m assigning you a code now, and linking it to your file in the system. If it turns out you need more extensive controls, we can see about getting you an app like the one I have.”

“You have an app for the security doors?”

“Yeah,” said Darcy. “Bucky— Mr. Barnes— he, uh… felt more comfortable having me sort of handle his requests privately, instead of them being broadcast on the main system… after the thing with Steve.”

“You know, that’s even better,” said Wells. “I like the idea that he can call on you to open the door, in the event he becomes uncomfortable and needs me to step back, when we’re trying this out. Are you always available to open it, should we need you? I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

“It’s no problem,” said Darcy. “I mean, unless I’m in the shower or something. But that’s not gonna be an issue during the normal session times, so…” She jotted down a string of numbers on one of the hot-pink Post-its, ripped it off the pad, and held it out to Wells. “There’s your code,” she said. “Be sure to burn that after you memorize it,” she joked.

“Will do,” said Wells, with a friendly smile. “And Darcy?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for being there for him, and respecting his boundaries. He says you’re a good friend.”

“Of course,” she said, feeling like a liar— _look at you, all mature and shit_.

“I’ll let you get back to work,” said Wells.

“Sure,” said Darcy. “Have a good one.”

Darcy could hear the woman’s heels click-clacking back down the hallway, and she sat in her chair, swiveling back and forth quietly for a minute, and then got up and turned the music back on again.

<<>>

She was eating her dinner alone, at the kitchen island, when Steve poked his head in the door. “You seen Bucky today?”

“No,” she said, “But that doesn’t mean he’s hiding out or anything. We, uh… we’re sort of trying to, um… keep our distance.”

Steve leaned on the door jamb, crossing his arms over his chest. “Really? I mean, yesterday… when you guys came out of the woods, you both seemed pretty, uh… comfortable.” Jeez, was he blushing?

Before she could answer, he said, “He also sounded more like Bucky— I mean… more relaxed— than I’ve heard in… well, in a long time.” He had his worried face on. “Did something happen? I mean… if you don’t mind my asking.” He rubbed the back of his neck and said, “I mean, I hope I didn’t… I sorta feel like I gave you a hard time the other day, and…” He blew out a breath. “I just want him to be happy.”

Darcy put her fork down, resting it on the unappealing blob of microwaved goo she’d been working her way through. “I know,” she said. “It’s not about what you said. I guess… Dr. Wells thought that it might make sense for him to not have anything… uh, ‘ _confusing_ ’ was the word he used.”

“Oh,” said Steve, sounding surprised. “You know, Sam sorta thought the opposite. I mean, not sayin’ he needs to be confused or anything, but he keeps sayin’ how hangin’ out with you— talking— is good. Real good.”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” said Darcy. “I mean, she’s gotta know what’s best, right? I think he wants to trust her judgment on it.” She could feel her mood taking a nose-dive. And she’d been doing so well. So well lying to herself, apparently. The long day of data entry and heavy-metal music had done her good, and she’d felt more centered afterward, shielded from her emotions, but now she was feeling those walls starting to crumble again. The truth was, she was fucking miserable. She missed him, and this forced separation felt like a sham. It wasn’t going to change the way she felt.

Steve must have picked up on it, because he said, “Why don’t you go see if he wants a sandwich or something? I was thinkin’ of having one…”

“You guys and your sandwiches,” she laughed, and then she said, “I could make some grilled cheese… like I said, I’m not the greatest cook, but I do make an okay grilled cheese.” She felt another pang of sadness, remembering the excitement she’d felt the other night, looking for recipes they could try together. Now she didn’t even have that to look forward to.

“You coulda fooled me,” Steve was saying, “with that lasagne the other night; that was the best thing I’ve had in a while.”

“Aw, thanks,” she said. “That’s one of the few, like, real _entrées_ —,” she said it with a snooty tone, “—that I know how to make. I had these roommates for a while, they smoked a ton of pot and if you could make something like that, it was like you were a god.” She snickered. “It’s the closest thing I’ve got to a superpower: feeding the stoned.”

“Stoned?” asked Steve, not understanding.

“Oh, uh… you know… marijuana? Weed. Reefer?”

“Ah,” said Steve, finally getting it. “I remember Bucky used to read pulps about stuff like that… tough guys, fast women… he thought they were hilarious.”

Darcy smiled, imagining it. “I should find him some. The stuff Dr. Banner has in the room over there is all pretty serious, intellectual. Not much light reading.”

Steve smiled back. “Maybe you should.”

Darcy had been squishing the tines of the fork into her food— it was pretty obvious that she wasn’t going to finish it. She slid down from the barstool and threw the remains of her dinner into the trash. “So— grilled cheese?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘no’ to a grilled cheese,” said Steve. “Hey, how’s your ankle?”

“Oh, it’s totally fine,” said Darcy, showing him how she could turn and bend it, put weight on it. “I think the ibuprofen saved me.”

“That’s good,” said Steve. “You know, I’m so used to this body now, that I forget how much somethin’ like a bad ankle can really knock you down.”

“Yeah,” said Darcy. “Guess I dodged a bullet.”

She got the stuff she needed out of the fridge, and put some butter on a plate to soften in the microwave. “You okay with cheddar? I usually make ‘em with American cheese slices, but of course Tony doesn’t have anything that trashy on the supply list.”

“Yeah, whatever you got,” said Steve, pulling out a barstool. “Thanks, Darcy.”

<<>>

She left Steve in the kitchen with his sandwich and his Starkphone, and headed down to the opposite end of the property to deliver the other grilled cheese to Bucky. She’d checked the status of the safe room on her app— he’d been sealed up since the late afternoon; he had to be hungry. If they were friends, then bringing him a grilled-cheese sandwich shouldn’t be any big deal. She’d offer it, be polite, leave.

She entered her code and pushed open the door from the gym, and when she got to the line of windows on the safe room, she could see him in there, lying on his side on the bed, barefoot, a book pressed open under his hand. He was in his usual grey sweatpants and a simple black T-shirt, his hair loose with one side tucked behind his ear. He’d moved all of the bedding off the floor and back onto the mattress, and she could see that there was now a desk and chair pushed against the wall opposite the bed.

She knocked firmly on the thick, Hulk-proof window, so that he could hear her, and waved, holding up the plate with the sandwich. He looked up, and then closed the book and tossed it aside on the bed, sat up, and scooted to the edge of the mattress. It seemed like enough of an invitation to enter.

She buzzed herself through the second door, and he stood up and slid a large rubber doorstop over with his foot, wedging it under the heavy door to hold it wide open.

“I see you’ve replaced my amazing piece of wood,” she said, moving to set the plate down on the desk.

“Miz Wells brought it,” he said.

“She bring the desk, too? I think I would’ve noticed her lugging that from her town car.”

“Nah, we brought that down from one of the empty rooms upstairs. Figured if nobody was using it…”

“Well,” she said. “I’ll let you get back to your reading. Steve just thought you might want a grilled cheese— he was having one, so…” She felt stiff and uncomfortable… like they were reading from a bad script.

“Thanks,” said Bucky. He was standing by the desk, his flesh hand resting on it, his thumb drawing a line back and forth on the wood.

“Okay,” she said. “Well, see ya.” She fluttered her forearms in a nervous gesture and then abruptly turned to go. She stopped at the threshold, was going to ask if he wanted her to shut the doors, when she felt more than heard him come up behind her, and his flesh hand was grabbing hers, moving her around to face him, his body close and his voice gruff when he spoke.

“Wait.”

She instinctively took a step backward, pulling her hand away, her back and her arms pressed against the wall next to the doorway, and he followed, caging her with his body, his head tilted down and to the side, eyes closed. She couldn’t read him, and her heart was pounding.

“Bucky? What—”

“I need—” he interrupted, but then stopped, blew out a breath and took another deep one in, almost held it. His eyes were still closed. He put his flesh hand on the wall behind her, next to her head, and tipped his face down, brushing it against her hair. His voice was low, urgent, almost a whisper above her, his chest rising and falling with the effort of what he was trying to say.

“I need to know…,” he tried again, “if you… if you want this.” Before she could answer, he rushed on. “Because I do.” He breathed out again, a release. “I want this.”

His hand moved from the wall to the side of her face, shaky, uncertain, smoothing back her hair, and then it slid down to feel the angle of her jaw, as his own face sank lower and she could feel the heat from his mouth, his parted lips near the shell of her ear, just like in her dream, and her body flooded with a warming ache that had her shutting her own eyes as her lips softened. She could feel her own breaths deepening as her mind raced, a blur of sensation— she wanted to do the right thing, but there was no way that rational thought was going to win this one, not with him standing so close, putting his hand on her, his breath on her face…

His metal forearm was braced against the wall on the other side of her now, supporting his weight and keeping that last bit of distance between their bodies, and she wanted to draw him toward her, to fit him between her hips and feel the weight of him pressing into her. She could smell him, spicy and warm, hear the sound of him breathing, and it was like she was being wrapped up in him, the air around her replaced by his heat, and she wanted to sink into it, let it envelop her completely.

She tried to speak and it came out as a whisper: “I thought you— we weren’t supposed to…”

“I don’t care,” he said, and his lips feathered against her temple, and she could feel the day’s growth on his jaw, like a fine-grade paper, a soft pull. “Been so long since I felt anything good.” He was breathing out the words. “Wanna be selfish. Wanna feel this.”

He moved his mouth to the delicate skin next to her eye, and she could feel that his lips were almost shaking, waiting for something, maybe some signal from her… his flesh hand was still touching the side of her face, his thumb moving on her skin, brushing the corner of her mouth, causing it to fall open, to pull in more air.

She reached out her right hand, touched his hip, tugged on it, and then her left hand grabbed the fabric on the other side, pulling him toward her, and he took the motion as her response, exhaling and letting his body sink into her, kissing her closed eyelid and the top of her cheekbone and then finally her mouth, and she gasped and breathed in his air and wet her lips, and she felt shaky as she sought his lips again with hers, making a little sound in her throat when he deepened it, and her eyes were almost stinging from the relief, the overwhelming release.

She pulled him in closer with her hands, and she could feel him against her body now, hard and wanting, and _oh_ she wanted this, she did. “ _Bucky_ ,” she whispered, and she was burning, and he caught her lips again, his hand now cradling the back of her head, pulling her into him, tasting her, breathing her in as his lips moved and caressed her, bolder now, like he was remembering what to do…

She pulled harder on his hips, seeking friction, wanting to show him, _yes and yes and God, yes_ … His flesh hand slid down her neck to trace the bones at the top of her chest, and then across her shoulder to her side, around the curve of her body, thumb barely tracing the side of her breast, and his hips pushed in to her softly and—

They heard a sharp rap on the window, next to them, and it was Steve, his voice muffled, tentative: “Buck?”

And though they were out of the line of sight, Bucky pulled away slightly, almost panting, rested his forehead against hers, and said, roughly, “Not now, Steve.”

The knocking came again, and then they heard Steve’s voice, apologetic, closer, just outside the door. “I’m sorry, I— I don’t want to bother you, but— I think we might have a problem.”

<<>>

Bucky was pacing the room, while Darcy had retreated to the safety of the desk, leaning against it as she struggled to listen to Steve, mostly failing, as she tried to come down from the intensity of the moment he’d interrupted.

Steve was saying something about Natasha— the Black Widow— and some kind of intel. “She’s been monitoring the chatter in a wide radius for a while now, and there’ve been some words— Russian words and phrases— scattered through, almost randomly, over the past week, and she’s been trying to work out their significance… could be some kind of code, but they don’t make any sense on their own, and she couldn’t link them to any location— until now. About an hour ago, the same channel that was receiving the Russian sent out code for what’s gotta be coordinates… leading to a location just east of here, near to where the access road meets the highway.”

Bucky stopped pacing. “You got the other stuff? The Russian?”

“Uh… yeah— Tasha said you should take a look, see if it made any sense to you, seeing as you’ve been more recently… involved.” Steve tapped and swiped on his phone, and then handed it over to Bucky, who turned around and looked at it with his back to them.

After only a few seconds, he clicked the phone off in his hand and let it fall onto the bed. Without turning back around, he said, low and even, “You’ve gotta get out of here. Away from the compound. Now.”

“What—” Steve started to say, and Bucky turned then, said it louder: “You hear me? Both of you! You need to go.”

Darcy was standing now, fear spreading in her gut. “Bucky, what—” Her phone rang, and she pulled it from her pocket, saw _Barton_ in the caller ID, and clicked it off, focused on Bucky. “What’s going on?”

The phone rang again, and she swore, and tapped to accept the call. “Hey, can I call you back? I—”

“Darcy?” She recognized Clint’s voice. “I need you to listen up. Something’s happening, but we’re not sure what, and it might involve Barnes, and the intel Tasha’s been working on. We got word that Dr. Wells— the therapist— she missed an important meeting today, and some people made some calls, and it turns out she also missed a couple of appointments last week. We sent someone to check her apartment, and we just got word it’s empty— no one home, no obvious sign of foul play— but there was a cat there, pretty angry, hadn’t been fed in a while. Sam told me Barnes was gonna start seein’ her, and we saw the Tower had her scheduled every day ‘cept yesterday— did she ever show?”

Darcy frowned, her left index finger plugging the ear that wasn’t against the phone, and said, “That doesn’t make any sense. She’s been here like, five times already. I talked to her myself today; she was totally normal.”

She could see Steve and Bucky watching her, tense, listening to her side of the conversation. “Clint, hold on— I’m gonna put you on speaker-phone. Steve and Bucky are here.” She pulled the phone from her ear, and tapped the speaker-phone button, and said, “Okay, go ahead.”

“You’re saying she was there today?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Just, uh… well, she left— what, a few hours ago?” She looked to Bucky for confirmation, but he was frozen, making no sign that he’d even heard her.

“Describe her to me,” said Clint, roughly. “Quick. Hair, body, clothes.”

“Um…” said Darcy, feeling shaky now with nerves, “Okay, uh, tall? Like, really tall. Blonde. Nice suits. Heels.”

“ _Shit_.” The curse was emphatic, and they all felt it like a bullet, and knew what it meant.

“But she was cleared through the Tower,” said Darcy. “And I ran it again myself; it all checked out.”

“Wells is short, has a prosthetic leg,” said Barton. “I don’t know how, but whoever that is, it ain’t Wells.”

“Is Tasha there?” asked Steve.

Barton’s voice crackled on the speaker phone. “Right next to me.”

“The Russian,” said Steve, “It means something— Bucky said we gotta get out.”

“Already on the way,” said Barton. “Ten minutes, max. Get ready to evac.” A second later, the call disconnected. Darcy grabbed the phone, pulled up Stark’s number and tapped on it, fingers shaking.

Bucky had dropped to the floor and was fumbling under the bed, reaching for something on the underside of the boxspring. She could hear several heavy objects falling to the floor.

“What do the words mean?” asked Steve, his voice lowering into his command tone.

The call to Stark timed out and Darcy swore, tried Jane instead, but there was no answer there either.

Bucky was kneeling now, furiously assembling a field-stripped pistol, and she watched him, her stomach sour. His movements were fast, automatic. He slid the barrel into the slide, locked it in place, pushed the spring in, pulled the slide onto the grip and racked it a couple times.

“Bucky,” said Steve.

Still ignoring him, Bucky pushed two rounds into the magazine, slammed it into the well of the grip, and then, holding it in his right hand, used the metal hand to rack the slide again, chambering a round. Only then did he turn to Steve, standing, and held the gun out to him, saying, “If it comes to it, don’t let them take me. Better to stop it here, now.”

Steve stepped back, his hands coming slightly up, like someone trying to back away from a aggressor. “Buck, no.” He looked shocked, sick. “Not like that.”

“Steve, you gotta. If it comes to it.” He still held the gun out, insistent. He was focused on Steve with a fierce intensity, pinning him with his eyes. “You know I can’t go back.” When Steve remained silent, Bucky said, his voice breaking, “You gave me your word. Just— take it. There’s two in there. One chambered.”

“What’s going on?” said Darcy, feeling bile in her throat. “The Russian— the code— what was it?”

He looked at her, finally, and it seemed like another lifetime ago that they’d shared that moment of sweet release by the door, having gone from an almost unbearable high, to… this.

Pretty sure it’s a trigger sequence," he said. "Programmed into me, by Hydra. To call the Soldier— make me… comply. It’s not safe here, for either of you. I only read a few of them, but it felt—” He turned his head to the side, swallowing something down. “You gotta go.”

“What? I don’t understand. Wells is Hydra? Can’t you just— There’s gotta be a way to—”

“I’m not riskin’ it. You gotta get out of here. I’ll follow if—”

He was interrupted by the security system shrieking to life, both the vehicle alert and the evil aircraft alarm coming on simultaneously, making both Steve and Darcy visibly startle, but Bucky was impassive.

“They’re here,” he said, shutting his eyes, his voice resigned. “Just get her outa here, Steve. Get her safe. I’ll do it myself if I have to.”

“Oh God,” said Darcy, “The code— the—” She stuttered, feeling sick. “I gotta block her access; if that’s what she was— oh God, it’s my fault.”

“There’s no time for that now,” said Bucky. And again, “Steve.”

The chime sounded for a door being breached, somewhere— somebody already there, ahead of the vehicles.

“I’m not leavin’ you,” said Steve, with an edge of anger, his body tensing, getting ready to fight.

“I’m not askin’ you to,” snapped Bucky. “I’m askin’ you to save _her_! Please!” 

There was a pause as the two men stared each other down, and then Darcy sprang into action, was out the door and down the hallway— not trying to escape, but aiming for the workroom, thinking, _I still have time, I can stop it_ , the noise of the two alarms drowning out all other sound, and she shrieked when a hand gripped her bicep, hard, the second she stepped into the gym, spinning her around and pushing her back into the safe-room hallway. She felt the press of hard metal against her skull, behind her ear, and knew there was a gun there.

“Too late,” said a voice behind her. It was female, all business, and Darcy recognized it as the woman who’d called herself Wells. “Hands where I can see them, gentleman,” she called out, and Darcy realized she was talking to Bucky and Steve as they moved past the windows, Wells making the gun at her head conspicuous. She could hear boots behind them, an unknown number of heavy men filling the hallway, blocking the exit.

Darcy had her arms up in surrender, the right one still pinched in the woman’s vice-grip. As they rounded the corner to the second doorway, she could see that Bucky was standing just inside, coiled, ready to spring. Steve had a hand out, a calming gesture, whether for Wells or for Bucky, she didn’t know.

“I need the two of you to step back,” said Wells, her voice raised. “Slowly. Hands up.” She was almost shouting, to be heard over the noise of the alarms. Steve was complying, but when Bucky failed to move, Wells made a show of pressing the gun more firmly into Darcy’s hair and said, “You have two seconds. One—” And then Bucky put his hands up, stepping backward, fury in his eyes. The pistol he’d had before was nowhere in sight.

“I have no need for her, and I will not hesitate to put her down if you give me any trouble,” said Wells, staring at Bucky.

Then, to Darcy: “Give me your phone,” and she obeyed, fumbling as she handed it back, felt the woman take it. “And now the one on the bed. Not you,” she said, as Darcy started to move. “Rogers.”

Steve’s phone was still lying on the bed where Bucky had dropped it, and as Steve moved to pick it up, Wells said, “Slowly,” and then, “Slide it over to me, on the floor.”

As he did so, Wells yelled back to a man behind her, without turning her head, “Report.”

“All clear,” shouted one of them. “Place is empty.”

“Good,” said Wells. “Tell Jackson and Schroeder to take two and watch the rear. I want the others up front, and four here with me. Stand by in case we need to go to Plan B. And one of you go do something about that damn alarm.”

“Pick up the other phone,” she said, speaking to Darcy again. “Hand it back.” And then, “Now the doorstop.”

She felt a tear break loose and slide down her face as she complied, her hands barely working as she bent down to pull the doorstop out, and tossed it behind her into the hallway. She started to stand back up, and then she was being pushed into the room, and she stumbled and fell as the door slammed shut behind her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and she knew she was going into shock, shaking, trying to stand up. She felt like she’d failed in some unforgivable way, in a job she should have never been given. She felt Bucky’s hands on her, helping her up, but everything seemed very far away as he said, “You okay?”

The blare of the aircraft alarm cut off abruptly, followed shortly by the vehicle alarm, leaving her ears ringing in the silence. She moved in to hug him, instinctively, but he held her apart from him, his hands on her shoulders, and said, “It’s not your fault. But I need you to go into the bathroom now and shut the door.”

She imagined she could still feel the barrel of the gun in her hair, at the back of her head, and she swiped up with her hand to push the ghost feeling away. Her legs were failing her, a delayed response to the gun, and she leaned back against the desk, feeling like her chest was shaking on the inside, like she couldn’t get a breath. She shook her head. “I’m not leaving you.” She pushed herself up and wobbled to Steve, needing to be near someone, even if Bucky was pushing her away.

They heard the sound of the intercom clicking on, and then the voice of the woman came through the speakers in the room, clear and loud and professional. “Sergeant Barnes,” it said. And then, “Soldier.”

Bucky had his head bowed, and he lifted it just enough to look at his friend. When he spoke, it was low, controlled, a warning. One word: “Steve.”

Steve, just as firm: “No.”

Bucky, levelly: “Then gimme the gun back so I can do it myself.”

Steve: “No. I’m not gonna let you—”

Bucky slammed his metal fist into the desk then, and the power behind it was shocking, unexpected, collapsing the side of it in a crumble of splintered wood— and she realized how naïve she’d been… seeing him, on some level, as just some messed-up guy with a hot face and a fake arm. She’d been distracted by her feelings.

He was a man, but he was everything else too: Dangerous. A weapon, if he fell into the wrong hands— maybe still the Soldier, somewhere inside. All the things Jane knew, objectively, that she’d tried to warn Darcy about…

And still, all she could really see was the man she cared about, hurting… in trouble.

They could hear the voice on the speaker take a breath, and then it said, “Okay, let’s do this.” The woman cleared her throat, and then pronounced a single word, carefully, in Russian:

“ _ **Zhelániye**_ …”

A sound came from Bucky then, like a cracking, a cry, and he tossed the splintered desk aside, and Steve pulled her back, away from him, trying to protect her. Bucky was bent over double, breathing heavy, and then he straightened up and moved to one of the Hulk-proof windows and slammed his metal fist into it. The sound of the impact was thundering, like a demolition ball, and the guys in tac gear, on the other side, backed up instinctively, nervous, but the window remained intact. The blow hadn’t even scuffed it.

The voice came again:

 _ **“Rzhávy**_ …”

He hit the window again. And again. The tac guys on the other side were grinning now, enjoying the show.

“Bucky,” said Steve, his voice full of emotion. “You can’t break it.” He reached behind his back then, and Darcy saw him pull the gun out— he must have had it tucked into his waistband. “The speaker…,” he said to her, looking up at the ceiling. “If we can take it out—”

“You can’t,” said Darcy, her voice thin. “He said there’s only two bullets— even if we took out two of the speakers, there’s dozens more up there— maybe in the walls, too.”

“ _ **Semnádtsat’**_ …”

“We gotta do _something_ ,” said Steve. “We can’t just—”

Bucky stopped then, turned around, and she could see that his face was wet; he swiped a tear away as he spoke. He looked lost, and it broke her heart. “Steve, listen to me: it’s too late. For me. But you can’t. You can’t let me hurt her. If you can’t… If you won’t do it, then let me. _Please_.” 

_**“Rassvét**_ …”

Bucky exhaled, clenched his teeth together, shuddering. It was like the words were hurting him, ripping at him inside. Steve was still holding the gun, and Bucky’s eyes went to it. Steve saw the motion, looked down at the gun, and when he spoke again it was determined. “We’ll find another way.”

Bucky shook his head. “There is no other way.” His voice cracked. “Steve.”

“ _ **Péch’**_ …”

He made a strangled sound, awful, and he was trying to cover his ears, block the sound, but she knew it was futile, the intercom cranked up all the way, the words like a physical presence pressing against them from all around…

Steve moved the gun behind his back, pushing Darcy behind him and to the side with his other arm. “Stay behind me,” he said, low.

Bucky took a step toward them, his jaw shaking, teeth almost chattering, a tear dripping off his face as he looked at her, finally. His voice breaking. “Darcy, sweetheart.” He whispered it. “I’m sorry.”

“ _ **Dévyat’**_ …”

He looked into Steve’s eyes, held his gaze, measuring; for a moment, there was complete stillness. Steve shook his head— _no_ — almost imperceptibly.

All at once, Bucky leapt at Steve and the two men were struggling with the gun, banging together against the wall, Darcy scrambling backward, away from them, and she could see Bucky trying to angle the barrel toward his own face, his finger on the trigger, and she screamed, “ _No!_ ” just as Steve jerked it back to the side and it went off, a deafening crack that split her ears, the round ricocheting off the ceiling—

“ _ **Dobraserdéchny**_ …”

… and the gun went off again, another miss, again into the ceiling, in the same moment that Bucky’s metal hand smashed into the side of Steve’s face, knocking him aside, and he had the gun under his chin and he pulled the trigger anyway, ferocious, teeth clenched, determined— but it just clicked, empty, both rounds gone, and he fell to his knees, wailing, and flung the gun across the room…

“ _ **Vozvrashchéniye na ródinu**_ …”

Darcy crumbled to the floor next to Steve, who’d been knocked out cold by the blow from the metal hand, his skin torn away at his cheekbone, blood running down his face, and now he moaned and his eyelids fluttered as he tried to come out of it, while Bucky stood, staggering to the window, leaned against it, struck it again, and all she could do was watch, holding Steve’s head in her lap…

“ _ **Odín**_ …”

Bucky punched again, and again, though it was pointless— now simply a visceral response, a protest, a last expression of refusal, and with each punch he growled a scream, and the window actually cracked just a tiny bit, the tac guys stepping back again, surprised, one of them mouthing, “ _holy shit_ ,” lifting the barrels of their rifles…

“ _ **Gruzavóy vagón**_.”

 

Everything stopped— his arms dropped to his sides, all of his sounds of pain and protest cut off, like someone had pulled the plug. His back was to her, and she could see his shoulders rising and falling from the physical exertion of his struggle just moments before, his heavy breathing now the only sound in the room. His hands were curled, like claws, and he was like something from a nightmare— something you prayed wouldn’t turn around, because seeing its face would make it real, would bring life to the thing you feared.

“ _ **Soldát’?**_ ” One last command— a query— came through the intercom, and it was waiting for something… the tac guys through the window waiting too, staring at him…

Darcy was holding Steve, frozen, barely breathing, and she’d never been so frightened. Steve was still trying to blink, to wake up, and in the quiet, she heard Bucky’s low, rumbling voice speak, but it wasn’t him at all.

It was the Soldier: “ _ **Ya gotóv otvechát**_.”


	11. Chapter 11

The door buzzed and Wells— not Wells— stepped inside. She’d swapped her power-bitch suit for black tactical gear, a sleeker version of the men who crowded into the room after her. Darcy kept her arm protectively around Steve’s chest, as she found herself hemmed in on the floor by heavy boots and the smell of metal and sweat. Wells approached the Soldier, gun drawn, while the men spread out to surround him, their rifles trained on his head. He was just standing there, still facing the window, unmoving in the circle of them, waiting...

Wells held a smart-phone in her left hand, and she glanced at the screen, her lips moving, reading something, and then she pressed the barrel of her gun into the Soldier’s temple. She said something to him in a language Darcy didn’t recognize— something exotic, both throaty and sonorant. The Soldier responded instantly, in the same language, like a computer program spitting back answers.

Wells exhaled and lowered the gun, keeping her eyes on his face. She reached down and put the gun carefully into his flesh hand— Darcy could see his fingers wrap around the grip, and his shoulders rose and fell as he squeezed it. Wells reached up her hand and stroked it slowly down the side of his face, as though admiring a sculpture. “Incredible,” she breathed.

Darcy responded instinctively: “Don’t touch him!”

“Be quiet,” said Wells, her voice calm, still watching the Soldier’s eyes. She tapped her phone and held it up to her ear, pulling another gun from a thigh-holster as she waited.

“We’re good,” she said, speaking into the phone. “Yeah. Let them know we’re bringing in two.” Her eyes moved to Darcy. “Maybe three.” She listened for a second and said, “Yup; so far so good,” and then, “I wish. Fucking amazing.” Another pause. “You guys can take off, but keep the ground team in place until we get out. Yup. See you there.”

Steve was trying to sit up, open his eyes, but they weren’t tracking properly, and he sagged back into Darcy’s lap. She assumed he had a concussion, whatever that meant for someone like Steve: maybe he could just brush off and keep going. Not that it mattered— with the bad guys controlling the Soldier, the odds were stacked too hard against them.

Wells looked at Darcy and racked the slide on her gun— chuckled as she shook her head. “I don’t know who put you in charge here, but I should send them a thank-you note.”

“Fuck you,” she spat out, tightening her arms around Steve. She was pretty sure she was about to get shot, and none of it mattered anymore— but Wells turned away and spoke to the Soldier instead, this time in English.

“Bring Rogers.”

He finally turned around, and Darcy saw his face: blue eyes now unfamiliar and cold, like a predator. He came at them, and the tac guys backed up, still wary— it was eerie, the way they feared him, even with all of their heavy armaments. He slipped the handgun into the pocket of his sweatpants so he could reach down to lift Steve, hefting him over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, as Darcy scrambled backward, away from him.

Wells gestured to her with the handgun: “You— up,” and then bent to yank her by the arm. “Move.” She nodded to the guards: “The rest of you, take point. Get us out of here.”

They pushed their way down the corridor to the gym, the tac guys in front of them, sweeping instinctively for targets with their rifles, though they’d already cleared the building. The Soldier was behind them, carrying Steve, and Darcy kept trying to look back at him, catch his eyes. One of the guards said, “We bringin’ the girl?”

Wells said, “Yeah; they can always use more lambs.” And, “Too bad we can’t keep him too; Sarge here was already a little sweet on her.” The tac guy snickered, an ugly sound, but stayed focused, clearing the way to the front door, and then they were stepping outside, into the warm night air.

Distantly she could hear a Quinjet powering down, on the other side of the property, and she thought, _maybe_ ,… _maybe_ … but Wells had heard it too, swearing under her breath, and then she was moving them double-time toward a cluster of black SUVs waiting just outside the gate.

“C’mon; move it,” she said, but before they were even close, an arrow zipped by from behind, striking one of the vehicles; another one hit a guard, cutting through his wrist, and he dropped his gun, yelling, “ _Fuck! Fuck!_ ” and fell to his knees, clawing at the shaft sticking out of his body.

“Spread out!” yelled Wells, and they were already doing it, looking for the shooter, and then another guy went down, screaming as he was hit in the knee. “Shit,” said Wells, pulling Darcy back toward the cover of the building. “Soldier!” she shouted, “With me! Cover me—” and then the SUV exploded, Wells and Darcy staggering backward, and the air was filled with heat and a rain of shrapnel, the stench of gasoline, and something ripped by her face, scratching it, and she spun around, trying to protect her head…

The Soldier was coming toward them, trying to get to Wells, Steve still slung over his shoulders, and an arrow struck him, slicing through his flesh arm with a _thwack_ , and he dumped Steve, the gun in his hand instantly, returning fire. The guy who’d been shot in the knee was trying to crawl to the other downed guard, leaving a bloody trail in the gravel, their teammates already dispersed into the shadows, still searching for the archer.

Darcy was cowering near the Soldier’s legs, trying to use his body as cover, jumping with every shot fired, and she flinched when something hot struck her body, but it was just a spent casing from the Soldier’s handgun. He used his metal hand to deflect at least two bullets that would have taken down Wells— someone shooting back at them now. Steve was on all fours nearby, his palms pressed on the gravel, and he spat blood, and one of his hands formed a fist against the ground, trying to push himself up.

Wells said, “Back in the house— _go_ ,” pulling Darcy with her, while the Soldier grabbed Steve by the ankle, dragging him as he followed and then yanking him roughly over the entryway, back into the building.

Steve was waking up, and he shook his head and blinked, understanding all at once that they were under attack, and he pulled up and lashed out at the Soldier, trying to throw a punch, but the Soldier stopped him— just reached out with his metal hand and pinned him to the wall by his neck, squeezing…

“Don’t kill him,” said Wells, sharply. She’d secured the front door, isolating the four of them, and was pulling up her phone, catching her breath before speaking. “Hey. No. Still here. Taking fire. At least two, maybe more. They came in on a jet. Uh huh. Vehicles are a no-go; the archer has explosives. Yeah, I can fly it. Tell the team we need coverage to the landing zone. Okay. Will do.”

The Soldier was still pressing Steve into the wall, strangling him, Steve’s hands scrabbling at the metal hand, his legs trying to kick or brace against the wall, but his strength was flagging, no match for the weaponized arm.

“Bucky, stop,” sobbed Darcy, “You’re gonna kill him.”

He didn’t even acknowledge her, his eyes deadly, focused on Steve, who finally went limp, unconscious, and the Soldier released him, letting him slump to the floor.

“Right,” said Wells, putting her phone away. “New plan: we need to reach the jet, clear it, and get the heck out of here before this turns into a bigger cluster-fuck.” She looked at the arrow still sticking out of the Soldier’s arm. It had fully penetrated the meat of his bicep and was leaking blood. “That gonna be a problem?”

He turned his head to look at it, reached his metal hand over and broke off the shaft, close to the entry wound, tossed the broken piece aside, and looked back to Wells. “Good enough,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Okay. Bring Rogers. Cover me once we get outside, and clear a path for us to the landing zone.”

She pulled Darcy along by the arm while the Soldier dragged Steve’s body through the dark house. They reached the gym door, and Wells said, “Open it,” to Darcy, and pushed her through in front of them. They could hear the spattering of gunfire outside, evidence of a battle going on, and Wells waited a moment, calculating, the three of them pressed against the wall, and then a spray of bullets hit the sliding glass doors— they shattered spectacularly, showering the gym with broken shards of glass, forcing them back toward the door.

“Fuck,” said Wells. “Was that us, or them?” She turned to address the Soldier in the darkness of the room, handing him a fresh magazine for the handgun: “Get us out of here. Get to the jet. Use Rogers as a shield if you have to.” Darcy whimpered at that, but Wells just said, “Shut up,” her boots crunching on the broken glass as she headed to the jagged opening, gun drawn and ready, holding Darcy in front of her like an extra layer of padding.

The Soldier dropped the spent magazine on the floor, shoved the new one in, and racked the slide. “Go,” said Wells, and he picked up Steve’s limp body and slung him back over his shoulders, before moving toward the the hole in the wall. He started shooting as soon as he stepped through, quickly but methodically taking out all the patio lights, until the area was bathed in shadow and then started down the path between the house and the pool. Wells followed closely behind, sandwiching herself between the Soldier and Darcy’s body, shuffling them sideways together on the gravel.

The sound of gunfire was receding, the battle pushed to the other side of the property, and they hurried past the line of lounge chairs to the wall of high bushes that bordered the patio, aiming for the rear gate.

A body came out of the shadows then, just a flash of limbs and hair— it threw something at the Soldier, stuck it to his metal arm— and then vanished. The device lit up and sizzled with an electrical pulse, disabling his circuitry, and he growled and tossed Steve to the ground, wrenching around, and then the Black Widow was on him, from behind, a wire around his neck, his flesh hand ripping up to grasp it, dropping the gun, holding the cord away from his neck as she pulled, and it was sinking into his fingers, the blood dripping…

He slammed his right elbow back, throwing her off balance, and reached down to rip the EMP device off his metal arm before whipping back up to grab at the wire again. Then his metal arm came back online and he jerked it up, clenching the fingers, ripped the cord away. He spun around to engage her, but she was gone, like a vapor.

Wells was still shuffling toward the gate, dragging Darcy with her, and hissed, “Let’s _go_ ,” and the Soldier bent down to retrieve the gun, something seething in his eyes, and he hauled Steve up again, following them through the gate.

They could see the jet, and Darcy’s knees were buckling, becoming a rag doll, and Wells tightened the grip on her arm, pushing with it: “C’mon, c’mon…”

The ramp was down, and Wells went on up, her boots clanking on the metal, pushing Darcy ahead of her, dumping her on the floor of the jet. The cockpit was empty but Wells checked it anyway, gun drawn, while the Soldier came up the ramp with Steve, dropping him next to Darcy.

Steve was moaning, finally coming around, and he rolled onto his side, tried to push up. “Darcy?”

“I’m okay,” she whispered. “Are you—”

Wells kicked her in the stomach with her boot, making her curl in on herself, and then spoke to Steve. “Can you fly one of these?”

“No,” he said, angrily, reaching a hand out to Darcy, but Wells positioned herself between them. Steve pulled his hand back and felt his neck. A dark red bruise was painted across it— the color of burgundy wine, dotted with fingertip pressure points. “I’m not a pilot.”

“You’re lying,” said Wells.

“I’ll run us into a mountain before—”

Wells interrupted him. “Oh, please. You won’t willingly kill your friend. You already proved that in abundance, back in the room. You would have let him rip this girl apart before putting a bullet in him.”

“Take him up front,” she said to the Soldier. “Secure him with these, if he gets frisky.” She tossed him something that looked like the zip-ties cops use for cuffs, but made of some kind of flexible metal.

The Soldier caught the ties and started shoving Steve roughly toward the cockpit. She could hear Steve whispering to him, saying his name. Wells called out, “It’s no use, Captain; he’s mine— for now. He doesn’t trust you anymore— I heard all about it, last week. Now close up the ramp and start the engines, or I’ll have the Soldier put you to sleep again and fly it myself.”

There were some thumps at the rear of the jet, but the ramp was lifting, and then it sealed up completely, and she could hear the whine of the turbo-engines switching on. Darcy looked at Wells, finding it hard to speak above a croaked whisper. “Are— are you Hydra?”

Wells ignored her question, buckling herself into one of the jump seats. She pulled out her phone and tapped something into it. Finally she glanced up: “What, you think I’m just going to spill all the details of my diabolical plan?” She made a scoffing noise. “This isn’t a movie.” She called out: “Get us in the air!”

The sound of the turbo-engines increased, and Darcy could feel the jet vibrating, and then she was pressed into the floor as they lifted up. Wells was looking at her phone again. “You may want to strap in. Could be a bumpy ride.”

“Fuck you, lady,” said Darcy, forcing the words out through clenched teeth.

Wells tapped her phone and held it up to her ear. She waited a minute, and then spoke to someone on the other end. “Hey. I need GPS to bring them in on a jet. Yeah. Just me. Nope; they’re on their own. Okay. Sounds good.”

The Soldier was still up front, and Darcy could hear Steve talking to him, a long stream of urgent words. Wells yelled at him: “Soldier! Get back here— take care of your wounds.”

He came stalking back, looked around, and then sat heavily into one of the other jump seats. Darcy was still on the floor of the plane, wobbling with the vibrations as they ascended. She looked at him, sitting there like a statue, and she noticed that he was still barefoot, his feet ripped and bloody from walking on the broken glass. She flashed back to him lying on the bed, peaceful— reading, before all this began… realized he would never eat that grilled-cheese sandwich she’d made, and for some reason that was the thought that finally broke her. Tears spilled down her face as she raised her eyes to him, looking for any sign of the man she knew.

He was sweaty and disheveled, his hair hanging limp in his face. The broken-off end of Barton’s arrow was still sticking out of his arm, and he turned his head, looking at it dispassionately. He shoved one of his metal fingers into the wound, and then grit his teeth and pushed until the head of the arrow broke through the skin on the other side. He moved his hand to grasp it, pulling the shaft the rest of the way through, and let it drop to the floor with a _clink_. A stream of dark blood followed, and he ripped the bottom hem of his shirt, pulling off a long strip of fabric all the way around, and then wound it around the hole in his bicep, holding one end in his teeth to keep it taut as he tied it off.

“Bucky,” she said, soft, careful, but he ignored her, instead looking at his bleeding hand. There was a perfect line of blood across the top of his palm, where the Widow’s garrote had sunk into the flesh, and he stared at it, flexing his fingers and then making a fist; apparently unconcerned, he let his hand fall back into his lap.

“Bucky,” she said again, a little more forcefully, and she saw Wells’ eyes move to her for a moment, but the woman remained silent, went back to the screen of her smart-phone where she was texting someone. The jet whined louder, and then they were speeding forward, and Darcy had to grab onto one of the seat legs that was bolted to the floor, to keep from sliding to the rear of the aircraft.

Wells made a derisive noise without looking up. “Idiot.”

Darcy crawled and pulled and managed to get into the seat directly across from the Soldier, and strapped herself in with shaking hands. “Bucky,” she said again.

His eyes finally flicked to her, but there was nothing behind them. “Stop calling me that.”

“It’s your name,” she said.

Steve’s voice called out: “We’re losing fuel— looks like all the aft tanks are damaged. Barton must have shot them out when we were boarding.”

Wells turned her head to yell, “How far can we make it?”

“We’re losing too much, too fast. We’ll be lucky to clear the woods at this rate.”

Wells cursed, a short, frustrated sound, and unbuckled herself, heading into the cockpit, her hand against the ceiling to steady herself. She turned back briefly to say, “Watch her. Keep her quiet.”

As soon as Wells was up front, Darcy leaned forward in her seat, and hissed, “Bucky, it’s me— it’s Darcy.”

His eyes moved to her again, but his mouth was a firm, unfriendly line. “Stop talking,” he said, his voice low, almost a monotone. Even the way he was sitting was almost robotic— his arms and legs symmetrical, waiting for orders.

She unbuckled and leaned toward him across the aisle, almost reaching out to his flesh hand with hers, and he looked at it, a crease between his eyebrows. The plane lurched and dipped, and she fell forward a little, her hand brushing his, and then she grabbed it.

“Bucky. _Please_. You have to remember. You know who you are. You know Steve. You know _me_.”

He pulled his hand straight back, ripping it from hers, and said, “Stop it,” and he was getting agitated, his chest rising and falling visibly under his shirt. He was clenching his jaw, and his metal hand was curling and flexing.

The jet dipped again, this time more violently, and she stumbled and switched sides of the plane. She took the seat next to his, on his left, farther away from the cockpit. She didn’t touch him again, but she spoke rapidly, almost begging.

“Bucky— Bucky Barnes. You know me. I’m Darcy. We cooked together— You— the mushrooms— the smell of the garlic— it made you remember something… remember we ate with Sam and Steve? Steve’s here— he can help you. We can get out of this. You just need to remember… The woods— your stick— remember how I fell? I got hurt, and you carried me… and I pretended to be mad but I wasn’t— Bucky, I liked it… Bucky it’s _me_ — it’s Darcy.”

She couldn’t help it then— she reached out instinctively, touched his arm— the metal one, closest to her, and he exhaled violently, growled, “ _Shut up_ ,” and he stood, pulling her by the arm, and she felt something go, something in her shoulder, and he threw her across the fuselage like a bundle of rags.

Wells was coming back, steadying herself as the plane bumped and dipped. “What’s going on,” she asked. He didn’t respond, but his breathing was agitated as he stared at nothing, clenching and unclenching his fists.

“Dammit,” she said. “Shouldn’t have brought her. Fucking greedy.” She looked into the Soldier’s eyes, ran her fingers through his hair gently, making him look at her, confused, and then she suddenly yanked on it, holding him steady while she pronounced the words into his face: “Let’s make sure we’re all clear about who’s in charge.” She angled her head to Darcy— “Maybe you shoot her.”

Darcy pushed herself backward, dragging her useless arm, a fire of pain inside the shoulder, but there was nowhere to go.

“Or no—” said Wells. “I got a better idea. Throw her out of the plane.” When he didn’t react, she let go of his hair and stepped back and shouted, “ _Do it!_ ”

He snapped back into obedience then, moving to stand over Darcy, where she lay crumpled against the wall. He jerked her up, the pain ripping her like a lightning bolt, and she was panicking then, and _oh God this might really be it_ , and she cried out, “Steve?!?”

“What’s going on?” he yelled back. “Darcy?”

“Shut up!” said Wells viciously, and then said, “Get it done,” to the Soldier. He was pulling and dragging her to the rear of the jet like a broken mannequin, and she was pleading with him now, repeating his name over and over instinctively even though it was pointless… _Bucky— Bucky, no no— don’t do this— you know me— you don’t have to do this— Bucky please_ …

Wells had returned to the cockpit to activate the ramp control on the flight pedestal, and the back hatch was cracking open, forcing gusts of cool air in, and Darcy could see it now— the night sky, the shadowy tops of the forest far below— and the panic she felt was primal, her limbs weightless as though they’d vanished, the pain in her shoulder now an abstraction.

The jet banked abruptly, and they lurched to the side of the aircraft, banging into the wall. He pulled her up again, and she was trying to brace her feet on the ramp, scrabbling to grasp at something with her good arm, but it was futile— she was like a doll in the grips of a Colossus, being dragged along to her end.

“Darcy!?” She could hear Steve calling. “I’m putting—” He was cut off and then there was more dipping and bouncing of the aircraft, and she felt hope for a fleeting second, knowing Steve could easily overpower Wells if he wasn't cuffed... if the Soldier was occupied.

But it was too late for her— the Soldier was like an unstoppable machine, locked into his orders, and they were at the exit now, the wind whipping their hair, and she tried one last time…

“Bucky,” she cried. “You’re Bucky Barnes— from Brooklyn… and I’m Darcy— Darcy Lewis— you _know_ me…” And a plea slipped out, a naked appeal from one human being to another: “ _Please don’t let me fall_ ,” and he’d stopped moving, a sick look on his face, so angry and confused, and she remembered what Steve had said— how Bucky’d been able to stop himself before, to _choose_ , but her brain was shutting down, the words a mess, just babbling:

“And your birthday’s next month… and we’re gonna have a cake… and we’re not gonna feel shitty…” She was gasping; she couldn’t breathe. And she knew it was probably over, and it was crazy to say, too soon— but she did it anyway, because she wanted her last words to be something good, undefiled by this horrible ending…

“Bucky…” His name, an orison. “Please— _I love you_ … come back to me…”

And she could see it— the change in his eyes— his grip on her loosening… And then the aircraft jerked, and she was tossed out of the plane, drowning in open air…

Falling.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the kind and supportive comments. It means so much to me to know that people are enjoying the story!  
> \-----------------------------------

_The woman was crying._  
_She didn’t want to fall from the plane._

_Understandable._

_But those were the orders._  
_She was familiar, but her words made no sense._  
_Mushrooms. Sticks. Carrying…. he carried her?_  
_A jolt of something: a smell._  
      _Earth. Damp._  
_She was trying to confuse him,_  
    _and it made him angry._  
_Made it hard to focus. Comply._

     _“Please don’t let me fall.”_

 _He remembered falling. Pain._  
_Another flash— Oh God I’m gonna fall._  
_Steve don’t let me fall._  
      _Who’s Steve._  
      _The woman, she said his name too._  
_She was crying. Talking about cake._  
_Her lips, full… he could remember… something…_  
      _a feeling— her face…_  
     _his hand, on it…_  
_Longing…_  
_**Zhelániye** …_

 _And then she was falling, and he remembered._  
_And he stepped out the back of the plane,_  
    _into the air, after her._

<<>>

He could see her, below, tumbling like a doll through the air, the treetops there, too close… he had about five seconds. He knew if he could break his fall with the trees he would probably survive, but she wouldn’t— not on her own. Needed to get to her first…

His body was in a clean dive, an arrow cutting through the wind, gaining on her. He adjusted his course slightly, ignoring the pain in his arm. Almost there.

He spread his arms wide just before reaching her, slowing himself to match her speed, and then managed to grasp her wrist and pull her into his chest, flipping them both over, just before his back slammed into the trees at a hundred miles an hour. He could feel the flesh being stripped off the right side of his back, down to the bone, the sensation unlocking a memory he didn’t want to unbury…

He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth and held on, trying to make a roll-cage around her, grateful, for once, for the metal they’d put in his body; it would give her a chance. They were slowing down.

There was a violent thump as they slammed into a thick piece of branch and it cracked, or maybe he was cracking, and then they were falling at a normal rate the rest of the way, the last thirty feet, to the forest floor. He was aware of the blinding pain, and of her— unconscious, but whole— in his arms, for all of a second, and then he let go completely, into welcome oblivion.

<<>>

It was dark in the forest when Darcy opened her eyes, and her first instinct was to shout, because the pain in her shoulder was unbelievable, and the confusion of being somehow in the woods, surrounded by shadows, made it all the more nightmarish. She took a breath to cry out, call for help, and froze, tensing— something stabbing her on the inhale— and she shuddered and stilled her body as much as possible, afraid to breathe deeply again. She was hurt inside, she realized, the pain almost as bad as her shoulder.

She was draped over something warm and wet and she realized with a start that it was a body, and she instinctively moved to jerk away, but gasped again from the pain in her ribs, and stayed put, afraid to move.

It was hard to see anything clearly in the shadows, but she could see the metal arm, and it all came back to her in a flash: the jet and Wells; the Soldier dragging her to the end of the ramp; the way she’d begged his dead eyes for her life.

The arm was pristine, the shiny metal reflecting back the scattered bits of moonlight filtering through the trees. The body it was attached to was stripped of much of its clothing, lying on its back, and the ravaged flesh she could see was dark and sticky with blood. He still had some shreds of pants on, but the bottom half of him was also a ripped and bloody mess.

“Buh— Bucky?” she choked out, and then, “Oh my God, Bucky?” The pain in her shoulder was unbearable, but she managed to inch herself closer to his face, bracing herself against the stabbing in her ribs as she moved.

He was unconscious or dead; she couldn’t tell which. He looked dead. She didn’t know how anyone could look the way he looked and not be dead. His eyes were mostly shut and the lids were still and a gash by his ear had draped his neck in blood. She reached out with a shaking hand to feather the side of his face and then rested her fingers over his parted lips. They were still warm, but she was shaking so badly that she couldn’t tell whether any air passed through them. She moved her fingers down past his jaw to the soft part of his neck, next to his Adam’s apple, and pressed down, trying to find a pulse… She focused and steadied her fingers for just a few seconds, and there it was: the steady ripple of his still-beating heart.

She didn’t yet know which one had survived— the man, or the Soldier— but in that moment she didn’t even care, as she felt relief sweep through her like a wave, and she rode it, dropping her heavy head back to his chest.

She felt the tug to pass out again, and in spite of the constant pain in her shoulder, she must have, because the next thing she knew, she was opening her eyes, and going through it all over again: the disorientation, and then the remembering. And then she heard a voice, coming from the body she was still resting her head on.

“ _Darcy_ …”

She almost thought she’d imagined the sound; it was like a ghost calling to her, a scratchy sigh pushed through frozen lips.

She moved heavily, rotating her hips and pushing just enough to slide most of her body off of him and into a better position, tucked partly into his side, her head on his shoulder, so she could see him without having to lift herself up. His eyes were still shut, but she could see life in him now, just subtle movements of his lips and jaw as he took in silent, shallow breaths. She reached her left hand to rest it on his bare chest, and could feel it moving up and down.

“Bucky?” She forced out the word, her voice a ragged whisper, her teeth almost chattering from the pain she was in. He’d said her name. Maybe it was him. Maybe the fall had— but why had he fallen too? She couldn’t remember anything after that surreal moment when he’d loosened his grip and she’d tipped back into nothingness. If it didn’t hurt so much she wouldn’t have believed it was real.

He was blinking his eyes open now, like someone resisting sleep with heavy lids— slowly, and losing the fight. “What. What happened.”

It was him— it had to be. The Soldier wouldn’t have used her name, asked her a question like that.

She turned her hips a bit more, putting her weight on them, trying to keep her ribcage immobile, and traced his profile through heavy eyes. He was alive, and he’d escaped. They didn’t have him. He was safe. She was trying to say it out loud, but it was so hard to speak, and she could feel herself being pulled back down, so tired…

She lay like that for unknown minutes, both of them unmoving, just watching him as he pulled in whispers of breaths. They were like two forgotten statues, lying ruined in the leaves… silent… infinite.

“I think we’re dying,” she said finally, pushing out the words, needing to say it— and a tear slipped out of the inner corner of her eye and crawled across the bridge of her nose.

His body seemed to awaken by one degree at her words, his chest noticeably rising as he drew in a deeper breath, and his eyes and lips pressed shut as he seemed to focus, pulling the air in through his nose. He worked at it for maybe a minute, and then, gritting his teeth, freed his metal arm from her, crossing it over his chest to push against the ground on the other side, away from Darcy, with the heel of his metal hand. He pushed and twisted himself slowly up until he was seated, leaning over, the metal arm supporting his weight, legs turned and slightly bent.

The position revealed his bare back to her, and her breathing quickened involuntarily, in spite of the pain it brought. “Your back,” she choked out. “Oh my God.”

He was breathing heavily now, either from pain or exertion, and he leaned farther over onto the heel of his hand, supporting himself as he turned his hips and bent his legs and, with a groaned exhale, dragged his calves under himself to a kneeling position so that he was facing her. The wrecked waistband of his pants was the only thing keeping the tattered remains of once-grey fabric around his lower body, and the black T-shirt he’d used to bind his wound on the jet was completely gone, replaced by a cloak of blood and dirt and pieces of the forest. All that remained of the shirt was the strip of cloth he’d tied around the hole in his bicep, where he’d pushed Barton’s arrow out. His hair hung in front of his face, his expression now hidden from her.

She could see, finally, the entire prosthesis— the shiny silver metal that completely replaced his left arm, from his fingertips all the way up to and around his deltoid, and into the structures around it. She could also see the thick ridge of scar tissue that she’d felt through his shirt when she’d hugged him that first time: a crudely rippled berm of ruined skin alongside the seam where the metal parts of him met flesh. It made anger stir inside her, this evidence of what was done without his consent, and the lack of care in doing it. Though she felt no personal repulsion for his severe scarring beyond that anger, she nevertheless suspected that this was not something he would choose for her to see. Still, she couldn’t turn her gaze away.

She was simultaneously awed by his unexpected show of strength, and nauseated by his being able to move at all, considering the horror-show of his back. She’d known, in an abstract way, what super-soldiers were capable of withstanding, knew that Captain America even had some degree of accelerated healing, but it was something else entirely to see it tested close up.

He’d taken a moment to get his breath back, and when he spoke again, she could hear that he was doing so with difficulty: “You’re hurt. Where.”

Her jaw was shaking again, teeth chattering. “Chest— my ribs.” She forced the words out, keeping her eyes on his, grounding herself in him. “Hurts when I move… breathe too deep. And my shoulder. Right shoulder. Hurts bad. Can’t move the arm.”

“Neck okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I think so.”

“Legs?”

“Seem okay,” she said. “My shoes are gone,” she said, only now noticing. It was a stupid thing to say. Of course her flip-flops were gone— she fell out of a fucking plane. She couldn’t remember if she’d even had them on the jet… with Wells… she didn’t want to think about it.

“Steve,” she said then, and started to cry, because they’d left him alone up there, not that they’d had a choice— but crying hurt too much, and she shut her eyes and willed herself to be still, to choke it down.

He’d edged a little closer to her, and, swallowing a wince, pulled himself slightly behind her, so that they were both facing the same direction again, stretching his legs out. “I’m gonna lift you up a little,” he said, his voice sounding stronger. “It’s gonna hurt. Try to lean back on my arm.”

He bent and eased his metal arm behind her shoulders, avoiding the one on her right and then, supporting her weight, carefully pulled her up into his lap. “Almost there,” he said, when she whimpered. He spread out his legs to make space for her in between, and then settled her back into his chest. “Okay?” he asked, and she nodded. “You did real good,” he said.

“Feels better like this,” she said. “Sitting up a bit. Can breathe a little better.” She was taking deeper breaths than before, thirsty for the oxygen.

“Probably got some busted ribs,” he said. “Gonna hurt to move, breathe deeply, cough— anything that moves your chest. Does it hurt worse after you breathe, or just during?”

“Worse during,” she said. “Or when I move. If I stay still it’s not as bad.”

“Okay, that’s good,” he said, sounding relieved. “Lungs could be okay.” His voice was getting steadier, like he was waking up more. He reached his flesh hand up around her to rest his palm against her forehead for a moment, and asked, “Are you cold?”

“No,” she said, “but my teeth keep chattering. Don’t know why. Can’t seem to stop it.”

“It’s the pain,” he said. “Your brain’s tellin’ your body to panic.” He moved his hand to her injured right arm, hanging limply at her side, and said, “Let me check the shoulder.”

She shivered, feeling the anxiety, fighting it, and said, “Okay.”

He was testing her entire arm with a light press of fingers and thumb, making his way up from her wrist, checking to see if it hurt, but she kept shaking her head. “I think it’s just the shoulder.”

“I’m gonna lift your hand up, put it on my knee, okay?” She just nodded to answer, and braced herself as he carefully lifted it up, placed her hand so that it was cupping the knee of his bent leg next to her, like she was reaching out for it. She sucked in a breath and grimaced. “You okay?” he asked.

She nodded again. “Hurts.”

He was feeling the contours of her shoulder and bicep on that side, and said, “It’s dislocated. I’m gonna try to nudge it back in. Feel a whole lot better.”

“Okay,” she whispered. She was tensing herself for some kind of violent yank, like in the movies, but he was just massaging the muscles of her arm and shoulder, and gently lifted up from her armpit now and then, and after a few minutes of that, she all of a sudden felt it slide back in.

The relief was immediate. She let out a long shuddering breath, closing her eyes, not caring about the fire in her ribs for a moment as she reveled in her deliverance from the shoulder pain. “Thank you,” she whispered.

He was quiet, still smoothing his hand on the shoulder, and then he lifted her hand from his knee and set it down again in her lap. She heard him exhale through his nose, hold it, and then breathe in again before speaking. “Did I do that?”

She paused. “I don’t remember it all,” she said, truthfully. She knew the Soldier had hurt her, but she didn’t see any point in his punishing himself further for it. But she didn’t want to lie to him, either— she needed him to know that he could trust her, even if it was painful. “The lady,” she said, not wanting to use her name, “She made you do things. She was… insistent. Rough.” She didn’t want to think about the plane; kept pushing it away. “Your back,” she said instead. “What happened? It’s— I think I saw bone. Torn muscle. It’s bad.”

“Must’ve broke our fall, comin’ through the trees. It’ll be okay. Don’t worry about it.”

“Why were you—” she started, but then swerved to a more urgent subject. “We gotta… I mean, we need help,” she sputtered, finding words more easily now that the shoulder was feeling better, although she still had to almost hold her breath while she spoke, to keep her chest from moving too much. “We gotta get you to a hospital, we need—”

“No,” he said, and she could hear the finality in his tone. “Too dangerous. We got no idea what’s goin’ on out there. They could be lookin’ for us right now, in these woods.”

“I’m sure Steve—” And then she stopped herself. He could have crashed— be dying, dead somewhere… or even still be Wells’ prisoner, though she doubted the woman would be able to hold him on her own.

“What happened to Steve,” said Bucky, sounding like he dreaded the answer.

“He was on the jet with us,” she said softly, not knowing how much he remembered. Maybe nothing, after the safe room. Her face crumpled again as she remembered the Soldier choking Steve until he passed out. “He tried—” She stopped, her eyes stinging. “We both tried….” She really didn’t want to cry, because she knew it would hurt her ribs too damn much. The tears came anyway, but she didn’t give herself over to it, focusing instead on keeping her breathing timed to a steady rhythm, in and out.

His flesh hand came up to her right shoulder again, pushing up the sleeve of her filthy shirt so he could feel the curve of the muscle there, smoothing over the skin, as though he knew she was still sore there, where the Soldier had hurt her. Her head was leaning back against his collarbone, and he tipped his mouth down into her hair, breathed into it, and then turned his face to the side, resting his cheek on her head while he spoke:

“You did more than try. One of you— someone did something. Or I wouldn’t be here. I’d be with that fuckin’—” He cut himself off, and as she processed the burst of anger in his aborted thought, she realized with a sick feeling just how close he’d come to losing everything again.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and she began to really cry then, in spite of the pain, clenching in on herself, but she couldn’t stop now that she’d started. “It’s my fault. I screwed up. I gave her the— she got the intercom— so _stupid_ …”

“Shhhh…” he said, and his hand came up to smooth her hair back, wipe the tears from her cheeks, then crossed his arm over her chest, almost holding her to him in an embrace. Her crying was increasing her need for air, and every time she drew in a deeper breath she felt more pain, but she couldn’t bring herself down from it, needed to let it out.

“Shhhh,” he said again. “Sweetheart.” He pressed a kiss into her hair, and the tenderness of it just made her cry harder. “They woulda found a way, with or without you— they had it all planned out.”

He was running his hand up and down her arm, trying to calm her. “If anything, you saved me,” he said. “If you hadn’t been there… whatever you did… I’d probably still be there… followin’ orders.” He took in a ragged breath and spoke softly. “I’d rather be dead.”

He continued to hold her, soothe her… running his flesh hand over her hair and down her shoulder, across the top of her chest, along her collarbones, as she cried herself out, and brought her breathing back under control.

“It hurts,” she said again, when she could speak.

“I know, sweetheart,” he whispered. “Just hold on; I’m gonna take care of you.”

“And what about you?” she whispered back.

“I’m workin’ on it,” he said, wrapping his arms around her again, taking care not to compress her ribs. She shuddered in another breath, strung out from emotion, and tugged down by exhaustion and pain.

<<>>

“How long was I out?” she said when she opened her eyes again. It was still dark and she was still lying back against his chest. She felt bad, using him as a support pillow when he was in far worse shape than her, but he didn’t seem to mind, apparently impervious to what had to be constant, excruciating pain.

“Not long. Twenty minutes. Injuries must be keepin’ you up.”

“Do you know where we are?”

“Not yet, but I will once we get up and start headin’ somewhere. We gotta move. Gotta get you somethin’ for the pain, clean up my back before it starts mendin’.”

“I don’t know if I can— it hurts too much; can’t even turn—” she started to say, but he interrupted her.

“I’ll carry you.” He paused and then said, “Gonna hurt this time, more than just your ego.”

She blinked back fresh emotion from the reference to the last time they were in these woods. It seemed so long ago, yet it had only been… a day.

“I don’t mind,” she whispered. “Didn’t mind the other time, either.”

“I know,” he said softly, and kissed the top of her head. “Brace yourself.”

“What, now?” she said, surprised, and then, “Oh— okay.” Some part of her had wanted to give into exhaustion and sleep, or at least just lie there and breathe for a while, but she knew that was unreasonable— that they had to improve their situation, and soon. They needed food, water, shelter… pain killers would be nice. She hadn’t the slightest clue what to do about Bucky’s back; she knew nothing about the healing process for a man like him.

“Try to hold still.” He was turning her sideways in his lap, and then bent his calves under, into a kneeling position again, trying to keep her body as still against his chest as he could while he moved. “Lean your head back here, if you can,” he said, opening up his left side to guide her back into the metal curve of his shoulder and left pectoral plate. She did as he asked, turning her face into his chest and resting her left hand against his sternum as he secured her in his arms. Then he pulled in a deep breath as he lifted himself first onto his heels, and then pushed them both straight up with his thighs, like the upstroke of a deep squat.

Once he was up, he stood for a moment, eyes shut, pulling deep, controlled breaths through his nose, and she said, “You okay?”

He took a few more breaths before opening his eyes and then said, “Yeah. Let’s get out of here.”

<<>>

He’d been moving, carrying her, for what seemed like a long time, when he finally spoke again. “There’s a big house north of here. Not too far now.”

She’d been holding herself as still as possible, braced against the pain in her ribs with every jostle and step, but she spoke up now. “I thought you said before, that—” She paused, taking another couple shallow breaths. “That there was nothing else around. For miles.”

“Saw this place the first time I was out,” he said. He was breathing carefully, rhythmically, in through his nose and out through his mouth, unlike their other trip through the woods, which had been effortless for him. “Kept it to myself; figured I might need a bolt-hole if things went bad.”

“Smart,” she said, but he’d stopped, listening. She listened too, but couldn’t hear anything. “What is it?”

“Hear noises,” he said. “Sounds like a pounding. Muffled. Rhythmic.”

“Like music?” she suggested. “Maybe a car stereo?”

“Could be,” he said.

She tried again but still couldn’t hear it. “You must have super-soldier hearing; I can’t hear shit.”

He’d started walking again, and he looked down at her, a sad smile on his face, the first she’d seen since… she couldn’t remember. Maybe since the last time he’d carried her… or when she’d had her ankle up on the barstool in the kitchen, and they’d talked about boundaries. Well, fuck that shit. Darcy’s mind flashed to Wells— the imposter who’d tried to convince him that feeling good was dangerous— to her self-satisfied face, so sure she’d won… the way she’d treated Bucky like a _thing_ once she’d gained control of him…

She really hoped the lady was dead somewhere. That Steve had crashed the plane and walked away from her corpse, or been forced to put her down in a fight. Darcy wasn’t a violent person, but she had no feelings of mercy for that woman, after what she’d done, tried to do.

She looked up to Bucky’s face and he glanced down at her, gave her that wistful smile again. “Don’t know what you’re thinking about,” she said, “but what’s in my head right now… sure as shit’s not making me smile.”

“Just nice to hear you curse again.” he said. “Makes me happy.”

It made her heart clench, and she said, “I’ll curse like a drunken sailor if that’s all it takes to make you happy.”

“Nah,” he said. “’S’not the words… just you bein’ you.”

She rested her head back into his chest again. She could hear his heart, strong and steady, and she wanted to hold onto it. Instead she just said, “ _Bucky_ …” almost a whisper, and curled her hand against his collarbone.

“What were you thinkin’ about,” he said, and she blinked and spoke the truth.

“That bitch’s head on a pike.”

<<>>

“What is it?” she said, low. He’d carried her for another five minutes, and then she’d been able to hear it too— the rhythmic pulse reminded her of the way loud music sounded when standing outside a nightclub. Bucky had stopped and squatted down, transferring her carefully to the ground, positioning her so she could sit up, her back supported by a large tree trunk.

“Stay here,” he said, still squatting beside her. “I’m gonna do a quick recon. Five minutes.” He had his flesh hand on her cheek, and his serious grey-blue eyes gave her his word, making her believe it. For a second she thought he was going to kiss her on the mouth, and her chest ached, wanting it, craving the reassurance.

“Like I’m gonna go anywhere,” she said, when he didn’t move, trying to be light, but it wasn’t funny, even to her. She didn’t want him to leave; knew she was completely vulnerable without him. “Be careful,” she said, softly, and then he leaned in and pressed a kiss above her eyebrow before pushing himself up with his thighs.

“Five minutes,” he said again, and then left, the crunch of his steps fading away as he was swallowed up by the dark.

She tried to squash down the immediate disquiet she felt at being alone and injured in the darkness of the forest, which was seriously the stuff of nightmares. She found distraction by investigating her cracked ribs a bit more, testing how deeply she could breathe and which movements were most painful.

She’d been trying her best not to be a big crybaby, or stress him out even more with the pain she was in, even though it really fucking hurt. She was aware of his keen observation skills and how little he missed, even if he didn’t outwardly acknowledge it— but he had his own terrible wounds to consider, and she didn’t want him prioritizing hers; she honestly didn’t know how he was even functioning.

She wished she could pass the five minutes by Googling _broken ribs_. She could remember this old episode of Little House on the Prairie where Michael Landon’s character broke his ribs by being a stupid asshole martyr like always, and the doc had bound him up with cloth wrappings and sent him to bed. She didn’t think that was the standard treatment anymore. Maybe Bucky would know what to do, once they got somewhere safe.

The muffled nightclub sound was incessant, and Darcy started to mentally itch with an irrational anxiety, as the scene began to feel too much like the set of a horror movie: _having barely made it through one attack, the survivors come across the possibility of shelter in the woods, only to find it’s already occupied… and, because they’re all idiots, they split up, with some members compelled to investigate, whittling the group down once again_ …

But this was Bucky, not some dumb jock, and Darcy knew that if he could go do a recon with half of his back ripped off, then he could probably handle just about anything. Still, it was a relief to hear him quietly crunching back to her in fewer than the five minutes he’d promised.

“What’d you find?” she said, as he gingerly lowered himself down to sit beside her, on her left this time, stretching his legs out. Unlike her, he didn’t lean up against the tree. He adjusted his position, bending one leg up and leaning forward to rest his chest against it. He seemed to be trying to catch his breath.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Buncha idiots having some kinda party,” he said, answering her first question. “I used to know the word…,” he trailed off. “Stag… stag party?”

“A frickin’ bachelor party? In the woods?” said Darcy, incredulous, and then winced in pain, and sucked in her breath.

“We gotta get you somethin’ for those ribs,” he said, looking sideways at her, his hair falling in front of his eyes.

“I’m okay,” she said, returning to her measured, shallow breathing.

He was still leaning forward on his bent leg, and he reached his hand down, pulling at something on the bottom of his foot. “Jesus,” said Darcy, when he produced a large piece of broken glass, dripping blood. “What that in your foot this whole time?”

“Guess so,” he said. “Felt like gettin’ stabbed every time I put weight on it. When did we— where’d we—”

“The gym,” she said. “Someone shot out the sliding glass doors. Don’t know if it was on purpose, or what.”

She could see him closing his eyes, swallowing. “I don’t remember.”

She didn’t want to talk about it, tell him what he’d done before he’d come out of it; she swerved instead to the matter at hand: “So this bachelor party…”

“Gotta be ten, twelve cars up there,” he said. “Fancy place, rich people. They’re all pretty sauced and they got a couple girls— you know, dancin’ girls— I figure they gotta pass out at some point, and when they do, I’ll go see what I can see… even if we can’t use the place, there’s gotta be some stuff I can grab.”

“You’re gonna rob the bachelor party?” she said, and started laughing, and then she was coughing and she grimaced in pain. “Ow! Fuck. God, don’t make me laugh.”

He had that sad smile again, and he leaned over to rub the the back of her neck with his flesh hand as she steadied her breathing again. “Okay,” she said. “New rule… no coughing… with busted ribs…. Holy shit, that sucked.”

He dropped his hand and sighed, and said, “I’m sorry, doll. I’m gonna get you out of here, I promise.”

The muffled music was still pounding nearby, and Darcy was struck by how crazy it was that they were sitting in the woods, bleeding and broken, having just fallen out of a fucking plane, when meanwhile, within a five-minute walk, a bunch of stupid guys were getting shit-faced and looking at boobs. If it hadn’t been so much effort to talk, she would have made some joke about it.

Instead, she reached out with her left hand, found his flesh arm on the forest floor next to her, and felt her way down it to lace her fingers through his. They hadn’t done that before, and when he didn’t pull away, the simple comfort it gave her caused a warmth to bloom and spread inside of her, in spite of the thrum of the shitty background music as their soundtrack.

“Don’t leave without telling me,” she said faintly.

“I won’t,” he answered, just as quietly, his thumb running softly back and forth on her index finger.

They left off speaking for a while, and she was starting to drift again, but before she passed out, she broke the silence to say, “Bucky?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m glad you’re here with me.”

He didn’t answer, but after a moment, he lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed a soft kiss to her knuckles, and then rested his lips there for a few seconds, his breath soft and warm, before lowering their hands back to the ground, still linked together.

<<>>

She was dreaming of the Destroyer— the two-thousand-foot-tall walking suit of armor that Loki had sent to earth to kill Thor— when Bucky woke her, saving her from trying to outrun the blast of an energy beam that had just taken out a building inside the dream.

“Darcy,” he said, speaking in a hushed tone. “Sweetheart, you awake?”

“Jesus Christ,” she mumbled, blinking and trying to open her eyes. “Fuck that dream.” Their fingers were no longer linked together, and he’d pulled her body back between his legs so that she was resting against his chest instead of the tree. He was running his hand up and down her forearm, trying to rouse her from the nightmare. Once she was fully awake, she realized that the forest was quiet again: the deep pulse of bass and percussion had stopped.

“Party over?” she said drowsily.

“Yeah,” he said, stilling his hand on her arm. “Heard the uh… the ladies leaving; then the music cut off about twenty minutes ago.”

“Think it’s safe to check it out now?” she asked.

“Safe as it’s gonna be,” he said. He was still touching her, focused on her hand now, picking it up in his and turning it over, exploring its shape with his fingers and thumb. It was the same one she’d injured when she’d smacked his arm in the security room, another lifetime ago.

“Your hand is so small,” he said quietly.

She could feel the rise and fall of his chest, behind her head and her upper back. In spite of their impossible situation, she felt safe there, in his arms. “I want to go with you,” she said.

“No,” he said immediately, but his tone was mild. “I can go faster, quieter, on my own. Best you stay here, keep still.”

“But what if something happens?” she said.

“You’ll be okay here,” he said.

“I meant, to you.”

He put her hand down then, and moved his own fingers back to her shoulder, the one that he’d massaged back into place. “I’ll be fine,” he said. After a moment he asked, “How’s the shoulder?”

“It’s good,” she said, rotating it a little, to check. “Feels tender, but the pain is gone.” She liked the feeling of his hand there, warm on her skin. “How’s your back?”

He was quiet a moment, still cupping her shoulder, rubbing it with his thumb, and then he let his hand fall away and said, “Not gonna lie; it ain’t good.”

“What can I do?” she asked.

“Nothin’,” he said. “House’ll have water, or somethin’ else I can grab, to wash it out with. That’ll help. It’s gonna start tryin’ to heal and I need to get all the dirt out. Probably got leaves and bugs in there, too.”

It wasn’t funny, but she couldn’t help the chuckle that bubbled up, and immediately said, “Sorry.”

“S’okay,” he said, his hand on her forearm again. “Was supposed to be funny. I’m a little rusty on jokes.”

His hand on her was making her want to turn on her side in his arms, so that she could put her hands on him, wrap around him, lay the side of her head on his chest and feel him. But she knew any of those movements would be painful and possibly unwelcome. He was like a cat— a layer of tension always there, ready to pull away at the wrong touch. She needed to let him steer.

He slid his hand down to hers again, and gave it one more squeeze before he let go, pulling his legs up a little. “Gonna move you back to the tree,” he said, and he moved his metal arm around her to hold her steady against him as he scooted back. “Hold your breath a sec,” he said, and then lifted her quickly but carefully out of his lap to reposition her against the tree trunk. “Okay?”

She let her breath out, gritting her teeth against the now-familiar pain in her ribs as the movement of her lungs and diaphragm shifted the fractured bones inside her. She managed a “Yeah,” and tried to give him a smile.

“You don’t gotta pretend for me,” he said. “I know you’re hurtin’.”

“Okay,” she said, and couldn’t help giving him another, pained smile as she said, “It really fucking hurts. I just— I don’t feel right, complaining, when… I can’t imagine the kind of pain… how do you do it? How are you not screaming right now, or passed out?”

“Had worse,” he said, and when she looked at him, searching, not seeing a joke there, he said, “Doll, you don’t wanna know.” He was sitting back on his heels, and he leaned forward to put his weight on his hands, pulling first one and then the other foot under his body, legs bent, so that he was again in a deep squat he could push up from. She realized that all of his movements were designed to avoid engaging his back muscles as much as possible.

He pushed up, tipped his head back, eyes closed for a minute, just breathing, and then he opened them and looked down at her. “Don’t know how long I’ll be. I promise I’ll be as quick as I can.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll be here.” He nodded a couple times, took a breath with parted lips as though to say something, but then closed his mouth and looked away, working his jaw.

“Be careful,” she said, just like last time, and he looked back and nodded once more, and then turned and disappeared into the dark.


	13. Chapter 13

Bucky was gone for over an hour, and with nothing to distract herself— no phone, nothing to even look at in the dark— Darcy found herself going back in her mind, walking herself through everything that had happened, trying to understand it.

Some images were too painful to linger on: his cold determination as he'd squeezed the air out of Steve… his anguished yet futile attempts to break through the safe-room windows... worst of all, his despair over the _click_ of the empty gun— knowing he couldn't even escape through death… she remembered how he’d tried to put her in the bathroom… so she wouldn’t have to see him do it…

Pushing all of that down, the points that remained to trouble her, and upon which her mind latched and turned and worried, were the details surrounding Wells. How had she slipped through Stark-level security protocols, which were among the best in the world? By the time someone made it to the supposedly secret Redoubt, there should have been no need to worry, as long as Darcy had done the minimum expected of her. So where had it gone wrong? She suspected it was a complicated series of errors, along with deliberate acts by individuals who were complicit, knowingly or otherwise, and ending in her own naiveté.

She wanted to hate herself for being so careless— so easily manipulated— but at the same time, it made her angry that nobody had foreseen such a possibility. If everyone’s safety was hanging by such a goddamned thread, then why hadn’t anyone seen it?

She keenly recalled the conversation she’d had with Sam in the kitchen— his promise that she was _safe_ , that they’d make sure of it. She had no doubt he'd meant it— believed it. Looking back, she realized that they’d assumed the threat was Bucky himself— not some outside force— and it’d made them careless, perhaps. Sam and Steve had accepted Wells at face value too— Darcy hadn't been alone in her casual trust. Nobody could have predicted this happening.

Except for Bucky— he hadn’t seemed surprised at all. Had prepared for it— had been ready to put himself down without hesitation. Would have succeeded, if not for Steve.

The Widow had seemed prepared too— intending to kill him, probably, with that cord around his neck— unlike Hawkeye, whom Darcy knew was skilled enough to have chosen a more lethal shot than Bucky’s arm. Were these personal calls, being made in the moment?

While she could understand a gloves-off attitude when facing an adversary like the Soldier, especially in close combat, Darcy knew she was more in Steve’s camp, unable to consider that an acceptable solution; her feelings were already too involved.

Her heart went out to Steve, remembering his steady and stubborn refusal to do what he’d apparently promised Bucky, even though it’d obviously been a betrayal. She understood— it was emotional, not rational. When she’d awoken in the forest, her first thought hadn’t been to figure out which Bucky she was dealing with, though maybe it should have been. She’d simply been relieved he was still alive.

Whatever this was between them, she was already committed to it. It should have scared her— it had happened so quickly. But of all the things she was scared of in this moment, her feelings for Bucky weren’t on the list.

This thing that was growing— it felt right. As though it had always been true, even before they knew it… a missing piece of a picture, waiting to be filled in… and now that it was revealed, she could only acknowledge the verity of it.

The universe was inclining its head, saying, “ _Yes_.”

<<>>

Darcy wasn’t good at waiting. It seemed too long— he should have been back by now. If she’d been less injured, less in pain, she would have definitely done something dumb, like creep off in the direction of the house, to check up on him. Without the music now to guide her, she would have stood a good chance of getting turned around in the dark, and then lost in the woods. Well. At least there was one silver lining to her cracked ribs: they were saving her from her own stupidity.

The waiting was torture— amplified now by the realization that she needed to pee. Badly. Well, great. She was going to have to move a little; she didn’t want to pee right where she was waiting for him. She leaned her body forward a little from the tree trunk, using her hands to brace and push herself, and then checked to see how much it hurt to slowly scoot forward on her butt. She stopped after one attempt: it was agony, engaging her abs too much, which in turn pushed up on her ribcage. She was ready to cry from frustration; she did _not_ want to be reduced to peeing in her pants where she lay. She needed to figure it out.

She experimented with several positions, until she found a way she could kind of shuffle herself forward, a few inches at a time, pushing with her left arm and pulling with one bent leg. She had most of her weight on one butt-cheek, which slid along the ground with each push, and wrapped her right arm around her ribcage, compressing her chest with each movement. It hurt, but not as much as letting everything float and move randomly.

It took her a long time, but she made it to the far side of another large tree about twenty feet away, which seemed removed enough. The desire to breathe deeply— take a big gulp of oxygen— was powerful after the minimal exertion, and she gave in, taking a couple of slow, deep breaths, gripping her chest with her arm as she did, shutting her eyes against the pain.

Now that she was there, she realized it was going to be tricky to pee without getting herself or her clothing wet— there was no way she was going to be able to stand up, pull her clothes down, and then squat again— but the need was urgent. She finally grimaced and pushed her butt off the ground, supporting herself on her left arm, while she used her right hand to quickly pull down her shorts and underwear together, thanking Jesus and Thor and all the other gods that she wasn’t wearing jeans.

She’d finished and had rolled to the side, away from the wet leaves, to slide her clothes back on, when she heard the crunch of footsteps in the distance, getting louder, and then Bucky’s voice in a harsh whisper: “Darcy?” And then again, louder, “Darcy!”

“I’m here,” she croaked out, yanking the shorts the rest of the way up.

She heard more crunching of leaves, and then he appeared out of the darkness and moved swiftly to where she lay on the ground. He had a dark woven shirt on, short-sleeved, open all the way down the front, and carried a large black duffel bag, which he set down, breathing heavily.

“What’re you doing?” he said. “You scared me.”

“I—” She stopped, embarrassed. “I had to pee.” She waited for him to laugh, or get mad, but he did neither.

“S’okay,” he said, squatting down. “I got us a vehicle, but we gotta go right now.” He put the handles of the duffel over the crook of his metal arm, and gathered her up again, as he’d done before. She leaned back in like he’d shown her the last time, trying to distribute her weight more toward the metal side of him, and he lifted up, the pain of it evident in his face this time.

“Nice shirt,” she said, fingering one of the pale buttons. It was rough, made of some kind of natural material like bone or wood.

“Thanks,” he said, breathing heavily again as he moved them quickly through the trees. “I stole it myself.”

<<>>

It took them about ten minutes to make it to the narrow road that cut through the woods, and the black 4Runner that he’d stolen— part of the reason he'd been gone so long; he’d put it in neutral and quietly pushed it down the road until it was well out of sight of the house. She tried not to think about how that must’ve felt for his wrecked back.

He let the duffel fall to the ground next to the truck, and then, still holding onto Darcy, popped open the door on the front passenger side. The light that came on inside seemed harsh and conspicuous, and he quickly crouched and slid her into the car and settled her in place, and then leaned in over her body to switch the overhead light off. She exhaled in relief to feel the soft comfort of the seat cushion, not even caring that the vehicle stank of cigarette smoke.

She instinctively started twisting to reach for the seat belt and then froze, wincing in pain from the movement. “Hold up,” he said, squatting down, and pulled a small, thin, throw pillow from the duffel bag. It was yellow and had little tassels on it. “Here,” he said, placing the pillow against her chest, and then he leaned over her body again to zip the seatbelt over both her and the pillow, and clicked it into place.

“Good?” he said, and she nodded, pressing her forearms over the little pillow. She knew it was to cushion her chest against the seatbelt— something she never would have thought of— but it was also comforting to hold onto, like a stuffed animal. “Okay,” he said, and backed out, shut the door.

She closed her eyes, and for the first time since the alarms had gone off in the safe room, she felt like maybe, just maybe, it would be okay. She heard him open the driver’s-side door and slide into the seat next to her. Once he'd shut the door, she opened her eyes and looked over at him in the darkness.

It was really hitting her, finally, that he’d saved her life: she’d be dead— no question— just a messy smash of matter on the forest floor right now, if he hadn’t come after her, taken the chance that they could both survive that fall. She felt like she should say something. Acknowledge his bravery… his resolve— and this was what had her suck in a breath, overwhelmed for a moment— that she was worth it.

He had the large duffel bag in his lap, and was rummaging through it. Before she could formulate any way to express her thoughts, he'd pulled out a bottled water, twisted the cap off, and handed it over. “Here.”

She took a long pull on the bottle; the water was cold and cleansing and she felt gratitude for such basic luxuries. He was handing her something else— a large, squarish plastic container of Planter’s roasted peanuts— and she put the bottled water between her thighs to hold it, so that she could screw the lid off the peanut container and dig her hand in. “Oh my God,” she said, when she tasted the salty nuts. Everything seemed surreal, beautiful...

“Go slow,” he warned her. “There’s some other food… I grabbed a few things from the cupboards.” He slid the bag over to her lap, and she handed the peanuts back to him, so she could rest her forearms on the bag. It was large and nylon and had big white letters on the side; she pulled up on the fabric to read the brand name, which was in all caps: _BALENCIAGA_.

“Jesus, Bucky,” she said, snapping out of her existential haze. “Forget that bitch Wells. Guy you stole this from is gonna put a hit out on you. I bet this thing cost a thousand dollars.”

“But it’s just a bag,” he said, and shoved a handful of peanuts into his mouth. “Water?” he asked around a mouthful of food. She dug the bottle out from under the bag and handed it back to him— she twisted her body unthinkingly, too quickly, and was rewarded with a stab of pain.

“A _designer_ bag,” she said, grinding the words out once she could speak again.

“I don’t know about that kind of stuff,” he said. “I just took the biggest one I could find.” He took a long drink from bottle, and exhaled loudly at the end.

He handed the peanut container to her again, and reached down to move his seat— he pushed it as far back as it would go, and then shifted his body forward a bit, not leaning into the backrest. It looked uncomfortable, but he was impassive, just going through the steps like a checklist. He stuck the keys in the ignition, turning the engine over. The bright glare of the headlights shooting into the shadowy road in front of them made her blink and squint after the comfort of the dark.

“You know,” she said, “the way you described these guys… I sorta thought they’d have douchier cars.”

“Douchier?”

“Like super-lame race cars or something. I dunno; I don’t know shit about cars.”

“There were some more, uh…interesting… choices. We don’t want that— don’t wanna draw attention to us before we can get somewhere, switch it out for somethin’ else before it gets reported.” He reached over and shifted the gear lever, and edged out onto the empty road.

“I’m not complaining,” she said. She was digging through the duffel bag, being more careful with her movements this time, seeing what else he’d stolen from the house. “What’s this for?” she asked, pulling out an oblong box of Saran wrap.

He glanced over, shrugged his right shoulder like he was working out a cramp. “Makes a good field dressing.”

“You got some on now?”

“Not yet. Gotta wash it out first.”

“Do you want to pull over and do that? I can help… maybe.”

“No,” he said. “Gotta put some distance between us and the house.”

“Okay.”

She rifled through the bag some more, and pulled out a cylindrical cardboard container of salt. She raised her eyebrows as he looked over.

“It’s for cleanin’ my back,” he said. When we get… wherever.”

“Dude,” she said. “That sounds like torture. Haven’t you heard of, like, rubbing salt in a wound? That’s a _bad_ thing.”

“Not gonna rub it in,” he said. “Gonna dissolve it in warm water. Use it to rinse all the dirt out.”

“Oh,” she said. “Won’t it still sting?”

“I’m kinda past carin’ about that,” he said.

She didn’t know what to say to that, so she put the canister back into the bag and rummaged around some more, looking through the rest of the contents. There were some men’s shirts and athletic shorts and socks and underwear, more bottled waters, a bag of fancy granola and some protein bars, loose piles of cash, a baseball cap, a bottle of vodka, and, rolling around at the bottom, several orange plastic prescription pill containers.

“I just grabbed whatever was in the bathroom cabinet,” he said, looking over at the pill bottles in her hand. “Didn’t check the labels or nothin’. Hope there’s somethin’ there you can use.”

It was too dark to read the labels in the car, and he reached up to press the button for the interior light, making her blink again.

“Sorry,” he said.

“No, it’s fine,” she said. “I wanna see what we got. I hope you didn’t swipe anyone’s heart meds or something.”

He kept glancing over to her, as he drove, waiting to see what was in the containers. “Okay,” she said, studying the labels. “Well, this one’s useless,” she said. “Acid reflux.” She dropped it back into the bag. “I’m not sure what this is,” she said, holding up the second one, “but I think it might be some kind of anti-depressant.” She held the third bottle close to her face, squinting at the words, and then gripped it in her hand, making a fist-pump motion, and hissed, “ _Yes_.”

“What is it?” asked Bucky.

“Hydrocodone and acetaminophen. That’s Vicodin, I think. Just what the doctor ordered.”

“Will that help with your ribs?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “I mean, probably.”

“Good. Take some.” Keeping one hand on the wheel, he handed the half-empty bottle of water back to her, and then reached up to click off the overhead light again.

She took the bottle without looking, putting it back between her thighs. She was still peering at the pill container, holding it close to her eyes in the dark. “Huh. This has been expired for over a year. I’m sure it’s still good, though.” She pushed down on the cap and turned it, and shook a couple of pills into the palm of her hand. “There’s, like, at least ten in there. Thank you, Jesus.”

“Wish there were more,” he said. “Those ribs are gonna be hurtin’ you for a while.”

“Yeah, but we should be able to get some help soon, right? I can get a bunch from a real doctor when we get back to civilization.” She cupped her palm up to her mouth to toss the pills in.

He was quiet, and she took a drink of water from the bottle, swallowing down the pills. “We’re not going back, are we,” she said after a moment.

He wouldn’t look at her. “Not until I know it’s safe,” he said. “And not to that— the place we were at before.”

She was quiet, and he looked over to her then, saw her clutching the little pillow against her chest. “We’ll figure something out. I’ll try to get in touch with Steve, if he made it out, and we’ll get you safe.”

She was silent for another minute, and then turned her head to look at him, and said, “And what about you?”

“What about me.”

“You said, ‘get _you_ safe.’ Not, ‘ _us_ ’.”

They’d reached the end of the narrow, unstriped road, and he turned left onto a wider, two lane highway. “I don’t know what to do about me yet,” he said. “And I don’t wanna put you at risk, while I’m figurin’ that out.”

“I’m not at risk, if I’m with you,” she said, knowing it sounded naive even as the words came out, so she made it simpler: “I want to be with you.” Exhaustion, and the knowledge that the pain-killers would be kicking in soon, was giving her courage, and she was being completely honest, holding nothing back, even if it meant sounding like a character from some cheesy Lifetime Network melodrama.

“We stay together," she said firmly. "Either we both go back, or… or I’m staying with you, whatever that means.”

He was quiet, looking into the darkness beyond the headlights on the road in front of them, and she looked at him again, moving her eyes over his face— the strong line of his profile, framed by the curves of long hair, his lips, which were parted slightly, the dark scruff shading his jaw— all of it already so familiar, comforting.

“I mean it, Bucky. This is where I want to be.” She faltered then, and added, “I mean, if you still… if that’s what—”

He turned to look at her again, pressing his lips together as his eyes roved over her face.

“Okay,” he said.

<<>>

They’d driven along in silence, staring down the curving line of the highway as it wove through tall trees on both sides, with the occasional side road cutting away to disappear into the darkness of the woods. Darcy’s pills were taking effect, and she was sinking into a blessed drowsiness where the pain was muffled and easier to ignore. She thought of how one such side road behind them had led to Stark’s place, hidden back from the road, unknown to outsiders, and wondered what other secrets the forest held, what other stories were quietly unfolding behind the trees.

The hypnosis of the road and the tug of the pills finally pulled her into a foggy sleep, filled with unsettling dreams where her body was being pushed about by wind and water and unseen foes, and an ever-present anxiety of needing to find safety, away from the elements. She finally found it in a roadside motel within the dream, and Bucky was there too, his back now unbroken— just smooth skin that was warm under her hand as they wrapped around each other, and the metal arm was gone, replaced by a flesh limb that held her body to his, the hand sweeping up the back of her neck, pushing her long hair aside so he could kiss her there, at the top of her spine…

And then in a blink, the Soldier was there instead, and he was lifting her body up and he threw her against the opposite wall of the room, and she smashed and crumbled to the floor in a confused pile, feeling vertigo, needing to vomit, and he was stalking toward her, and she woke up with a start—

“You okay?” His soft voice came through the darkness of the vehicle, and she blinked, trying to throw off the tendrils of the nightmare, still feeling the confusion, the impact on the wall. It had felt real.

“Bad dreams,” she said. She felt a stir of nausea and recognized the feeling, from when she’d taken too much codeine after having her wisdom teeth out. “Probably the pills. Empty stomach.” She opened the duffel bag and rummaged around for one of the protein bars, unwrapped one end and took a bite, forcing her jaw to work through the dense ingredients. Chewing felt like too much work, and she folded the wrapper over the remains of the bar, and tucked it into one of the cup holders in the center console. She swallowed the food and sighed. “Where are we?” she asked.

“Coming up on a town,” he said. “Gonna try to find a place to stop, on the outskirts.”

They’d seen no other cars on the road, and it felt as though they were the only people left on the planet. The pills were still knocking the pain down, and a bed sounded like heaven, even after the disquieting end to her dream. She didn’t know why her brain was going there; she wasn’t afraid of him like that. She knew he wasn’t just going to flip into killer mode for no reason— he was a man, not a malfunctioning piece of tech.

She wanted to ask him about the words— the trigger words that had tripped his programming— but this was definitely not the time. It was scary enough even for her, thinking about it: remembering what had happened in the safe room… she mentally scoffed at the irony of the room’s name now… It hadn’t been safe at all— for anyone.

They came to a four-way controlled intersection, and she could see signs for lodging and food, with arrows to the right. A Pizza Hut billboard made her stomach growl. “We should get a pizza,” she said.

“Later,” he said, turning left through the intersection, away from the town, when the light turned green. They drove down the larger, divided highway, passing bleak rectangular apartment buildings set back from the road, all of them identical and completely utilitarian in design, looking more like a collection of barracks than homes for regular people. They passed a couple of recognizable hotel franchises, but Bucky drove right past them, not even considering.

After a few more miles, he nodded his head to the right, and said, “There.”

Darcy looked out her window to see a peeling old sign that said, ‘Joe’s Motel’, and a building behind it that she would have never agreed to stay in before all of this had happened. It looked like the kind of place that rented by the hour, for your sex and murder convenience.

Bucky took the exit to the frontage road, and then pulled into the parking lot for the motel, put the car in park, but left it running. There were only a few other cars parked on the property, and it was dark and quiet. The office was a run-down single-family home that sat next to the long, crumbling two-story building that housed the rooms, each with a faded-red door.

“Wait here,” he said, and eased himself out of the car, leaving the door open. He cautiously approached the house, which was dark. It almost looked abandoned. There was some kind of hand-written sign hanging in the window of the front door. He peered at it, and then returned to the car.

“They open at six,” he said.

“What time is it now?” she asked.

“Quarter to five.”

“Aren’t you tired?” she asked. He’d been driving all night— as far as she knew, he hadn’t had any sleep in twenty-four hours, other than the unknown duration of unconsciousness after the fall.

“Yeah,” he said, giving her a tired smile. “Yeah, I am. Couldn’t sleep, though, right now, even if, you know… even if I could.”

“You want some of the pills? They’re pretty good.”

“Naw,” he said. “Wouldn’t work on me. I’d have to take them all, and I’d still burn right through it. Be a waste.”

“Do you wanna drive back into town? See if there’s a drive-thru open or something? We wouldn’t need shoes or anything.”

“That reminds me,” he said. “Check in the big inside pocket of the duffel.”

She reached in and felt around, found the big pocket, and pulled out a pair of hot pink foam-and-plastic flip flops.

“Found those in the closet. Maybe you can use ‘em.”

They looked too big, but they were better than nothing, and she went to lean over and try them on, but winced and aborted her attempt. “No can do,” she said. “Can’t move that direction.”

“I’ll help you put ‘em on, later,” he said, and then looked at her. “I can hear your stomach growling.” He put his hand on the gear lever, shifted into reverse, and backed out of the parking spot, making a pained sound when he instinctively reached his right arm behind her headrest to back out. He closed his eyes, breathing through it, and then said, “Let’s go get you somethin’ warm to eat.”

<<>>

_God bless America_ , she was thinking, as she inhaled a handful of warm, greasy french fries and chased it with a long drink of cold, watery Coca-Cola. They were parked in the lot of a McDonald’s, and had piles of wrapped food in their laps. Neither of them spoke as they made their way through the disgusting, unhealthful, and, at the moment, absolutely delectable bounty of junk food, only pausing occasionally to drink, as though their eating were a marathon, and the finish line was a pile of empty bags and wrappers.

Bucky had taken cash from every wallet he could find at the bachelor party, and when Darcy had counted up the total, it had come to more than a thousand dollars. She found she didn’t feel guilty in the slightest. The rich boys would bounce back.

She’d been nervous, even in the pre-dawn darkness of the drive-thru, with both of them wrecked and bloody, pieces of forest stuck to them; Bucky had had to keep his left hand down at the window, the exposed parts of his metal arm pressed into the car door, out of sight, while he used his right hand to reach over and pay, and again to accept the bags of food. The half-conscious employee at the window hadn’t given either of them a second glance.

She crumpled up the wrapper for her quarter-pounder with cheese, and looked over to Bucky, who was on his third burger. He hadn’t known what to order, so she’d helped him out, based on her observation of what she’d seen Steve, or even Thor, pack away.

“You super-hero types need to eat,” she’d said. “You should get, like, quadruple what a normal person would order.”

“Not a super-hero,” he’d said.

“You’re super- _something_ ,” she’d said, and he’d let it go.

Now he was working his way through the food like a starving man at a buffet, and she smiled and said, “Told you so.” And then, thinking, said, “How come you never ate that much back at the place? If me and Steve hadn’t made it a point to feed you sandwiches, I don’t think you’d have gotten even your daily minimum.”

“Dunno,” he said. “Guess I didn’t feel hungry.”

He had a little blob of ketchup on the corner of his mouth, and she couldn’t help herself: she reached across with her left hand and swept it up with her index finger, and then retracted her hand, cleaning the tip of her finger with a touch of her tongue as her lips circled around it.

He looked over at her, and wet his lower lip with the tip of his tongue. “Stealin’ my food?”

“Nope,” she said, popping the ‘P.’ “Just cleaning up that gorgeous face so I can get a better look.”

He licked his lips again and rubbed them together, and then pulled his coke out of the cup holder in the center console and took a long pull on the straw.

He seemed uneasy, and she didn’t know if was because of what she’d said, or that she’d touched him without warning. “Does it make you uncomfortable,” she said, “when I say stuff like that?”

He took another drink of Coke and then put it back into the cup holder. “Not used to that kind of… attention,” he said. “Compliments. Don’t know what to do with it.”

“Been a while, huh?” she asked. She was slowing down, and moved her half-eaten sleeve of large fries over to his pile.

“You could say that.”

“Well, get used to it,” she said. “I like giving compliments. Especially when they’re true.” She lifted her butt a fraction, adjusting in her seat, and winced. “I need to pee again. How are you not having to pee? Do you have, like, a metal bladder, too?”

He chuckled and crumpled up the last of his wrappers, and shoved them all into one of the empty paper bags. “I’m holdin’ it,” he said. He checked the clock on the car. “Let’s head back, see if they’re open yet.” He threw the garbage into the back seat, careful not to twist his back too much, and said, “You should take another one of those pills. Can tell your pain’s comin’ back.”

“Okay,” she said, and went through the bag to find all the pill bottles. She took the containers for the reflux and antidepressant meds out of the bag and said, “Do you think it’s okay to toss these with the food garbage? I mean, like, nobody’s gonna dig through a McDonald’s dumpster, right?”

“You’d be surprised,” he said. “But yeah— we can toss them. Just save all the empty water bottles.”

He drove around to the back of the parking lot and pulled up next to a big blue dumpster that was overflowing with clear plastic garbage bags filled with fast-food trash. She gathered up all of her garbage, adding the two pill bottles to it, and shoved it all into the other empty brown bag. He reached back to retrieve his garbage, combined it with hers, and then rolled down the window on his side and tossed it all into the big pile.

“All right; let’s get out here,” he said. “Take your pills.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, opening the cap on the container and shaking out two more of the tablets. She washed them down with some Coke, put the lid back on the pill bottle, and then buried it back into the duffel bag.

<<>>

It only took five minutes to get back to the creepy old motel, and they still had fifteen minutes until the office opened, if the sign was telling the truth. Bucky used the time to coach her on what to say to the clerk inside.

“Place like this’ll take cash, no problem,” he said, “and probably won’t ask for any information, like a license-plate number. But if they do, you just say you forgot something, and you come back out here and we’ll take off, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, nodding.

“Tell ‘em your— that your husband’s been drivin’ all night, and you’re lookin’ for a quiet room where he can sleep. Tell ‘em you need a ground-floor room. You get a bad feelin’ at all from anyone in there, you just come back out and we’ll go.”

He’d taken another bottle of water from the duffel bag, and was using it to moisten one of the brown paper napkins from the drive-thru. “C’mere,” he said, and leaned toward her a bit, used the napkin to clean the dirt off her face, pushed her hair back with his fingers. Little bits of crushed leaf were falling out of her hair, into her lap. “Those pills kick in yet? You think you can make it inside and back?”

She wasn’t sure, but she knew she had to do it. There was no way Bucky could go in there, with his shredded pants and dried blood everywhere, to say nothing of the metal arm and hand, which were completely obvious in the short-sleeved shirt. “I can do it,” she said. “I’ll just go slow, like I’m tired.” She added, after a second, “Or drunk. I bet they get plenty of that here.”

“Don’t overplay it,” he said. “Just be steady, slow, don’t say much.” He finished cleaning her face, and pressed his palm against her cheek, just for a moment.

“Okay,” she said. She was starting to get nervous. She went into the bag and opened the hidden zipper pouch inside, pulled out a wad of the cash she’d put there. Her hands were shaky.

“It’ll be okay,” he said. “The people inside don’t know nothin’, don’t expect nothin’. You go in there, be polite, get the room, come back.”

He leaned over and picked up the flip-flops she’d dropped into the footwell, and then picked up her bare feet, one at a time, and put them on her. They were a bit too big, but they’d do— even the worst, ill-fitting shoe was less conspicuous than bare feet. Finally, he pulled a baseball cap out of the bag, and put it on her head, pulling the brim down to hide her eyes slightly. It’d been adjusted for a man’s head, but with her thick hair, the fit was all right.

“I officially look like an idiot,” she said, trying not to laugh. “Ball caps on big hair? That’s a fashion _don’t_ ,” she said.

“You always look beautiful,” he said, and pushed her hair off her shoulders, so that it lay behind her, down her back. It was an unexpected remark, and she couldn’t find a reply— just wanted to lean into his touch… but he’d already pulled away.

It was a few minutes after six, and he said, “You ready?”

“Yup.”

“Take it slow.”

“Ten-four,” she said, trying to sound confident, and slowly reached over to lift the interior door handle until the truck door popped open. He’d pressed the button to unbuckle her seat belt, and helped thread it back away from her body. She handed him the little yellow pillow, and said, “Take care of Mr. Cuddles ’til I get back.”

He pulled the pillow into his lap and said, “Sure thing, doll. I’ll be right here, ready to go, if you need to get out.”

“Okay.”

He took the duffel bag off her lap. It’d been a convenient prop for her arms and then her food, keeping her from needing to bend or lean over, and now the removal of its weight made her feel empty and exposed— somehow smaller. Weak. She inched her legs slowly over to the door, and he leaned across her lap to push it open farther so that she could get out.

“Okay,” she said again, steeling herself. She took a deep, painful breath and held it, and then used her triceps, pushing down on the seat with her hands, to lever herself upward. She felt Bucky’s hand on her back, supporting her so that she wouldn’t fall backward. She felt the flip-flops touch the ground outside, and let the rest of her body slide out of the car, hanging onto the door as she left the support of Bucky’s hand behind her.

“Got it?” she heard him say, and she nodded, unable to speak for a moment. The pills were definitely starting to kick in again, but standing up was a new level of hell-fuckery. She realized, too, that she hadn’t really used her legs since being force-marched to the jet by Wells, and they were shaky, weak, and unreliable.

She opened her eyes and focused her energies, knowing she had to do it— that Bucky was depending on her, and that some measure of relief awaited both of them if only she could do this one thing. She took another deep breath, eyes smarting from the pain, held it, and started to shuffle forward.

Controlled moving wasn’t as bad as standing up had been. She found that if she slid her feet forward, about six inches at a time on each side, she could keep her chest relatively stable. She advanced slowly to the house like that, feeling like an actor portraying a waddling, heavily-pregnant woman.

She made it to the screen door, which had a cheap aluminum push-button handle on it. The inner, wooden door was open now, and she could see a dark-haired woman inside, sitting behind a counter. She knew Bucky was still watching, making sure she was okay, so she mustered her courage and pressed the button on the handle, swung the door open, and stepped inside.

The woman looked up and said, “Hullo,” in a raspy voice, drawing out the long ‘O’. She was middle-aged, and looked Native American. “Need a room?” She had a friendly face, but Darcy could feel herself being analyzed.

The screen door slammed shut behind her, and Darcy looked around the room she’d entered. It looked like it’d once been the entryway and living room to the small house, but had been converted into a makeshift reception area, with a few old easy chairs and a rickety brown card table against one wall, and what once may have been a kitchen countertop on the far side, with a old-fashioned dial phone sitting on it. The room was carpeted with a beaten-down brown pile that looked to hold the stains of a thousand years.

There was a middle-aged man, also Native American, dozing in one of the chairs, and an overflowing ashtray sat on the card table next to him. A brown plastic plate was next to it with what looked like a squashed, half-eaten baloney sandwich. The room stank of cigarettes and stale sweat and some unidentifiable odor of cooked meat.

“Uh, yeah,” said Darcy, trying to play it cool, and remember the story. “My, uh… my husband’s been driving all night and he needs to take a nap. Do you have a quiet room?” She remembered to say at the last second, “We need something on the ground floor.”

The owner— if that’s who she was— just looked at her, assessing for a moment, and Darcy almost panicked, but then the woman spoke again, barking it out: “Thirty bucks.”

“Oh— oh, okay,” she said. _Oh God_ , she thought, realizing… _She thinks I’m a hooker. And “take a nap” is code for_ …

“Um,” she said. “Is that the rate for, like, a whole night? He really does need to take a nap.”

The woman cracked a smile and said, “Give me forty and we’re square.”

Darcy went into the pocket of her shorts and pulled out the wad of cash, peeled off two twenties, and handed them over, hoping her slight shakiness wasn’t noticeable.

“You okay honey?” the woman asked, and she sounded kind when she said it, and Darcy realized she’d instinctively wrapped her left arm around her ribcage when’d she twisted to dig into her pocket. It was an obvious tell.

“Oh, uh… yeah,” she said. “I, um— I got into a car accident last week. I cracked my ribs. Hurts a lot still.”

“Ah,” said the woman, nodding. She had a funny look on her face, and Darcy knew that her lie was a total fail, but the woman likely suspected her of covering up some run-of-the-mill tragedy, like domestic abuse— not that she’d just fallen out of a fucking jet. “Joe there,” the woman said, indicating the sleeping man, “He busted up his ribs once. He laid around in bed for weeks. Got pneumonia. You don’t wanna go down that road.”

The way she said her long ‘O’s… _Joe_ and _don’t_ and _road_ … they were rounded and elongated and reminded Darcy of the way comedians mimicked Canadian accents. She wondered how close they were to the border.

The woman was still talking. “You gotta keep walking, keep breathing. Nice and deep, even though it hurts. And don’t wrap ‘em up, whatever you do.”

“Oh,” said Darcy. “Okay. Thanks.” She wanted to get out of there, but she was still waiting for a key. “Can I, um… can I get the key?”

The woman turned to the side and pulled an old-fashioned hotel key— a real metal key, with a plastic number tag on it— from a hook on a peg-board wall.

“Here ya go, honey.”

Darcy took it gratefully, and turned to go, but then had a sudden thought and said, “Is there like, a Target or something around? I need to do some shopping.”

The dozing man spoke up abruptly, nearly giving her a heart attack. “The Walmart’s there in town,” he said, with the deep, scratchy voice of a lifetime smoker. “Next to the Home Depot. You get back on 37 and head into town; it’s on the right. Can’t miss it.”

“Thanks,” said Darcy, and turned and shuffled her way back to the door, adrenaline spiking in her blood and making her limbs tingle. She fumbled at the screen door, finally getting it open.

“Need the key back by twelve-o-clock tomorrow,” said the woman, behind her. “And don’t forget— deep breaths.”

Darcy didn’t bother to acknowledge her, just wanting to get out of there. She had the key clutched in her hand. She could see Bucky in the car, looking at her anxiously through the windshield, and she lifted her hand slightly, showing him the key. He turned on the ignition, and then leaned over to help her get back into her seat when she got to the truck. She slid in, and once she was seated again, let out a huge breath, hugging herself with her left arm.

“You okay?” said Bucky, concerned.

“Fucking David Lynch movie in there,” she said.

“I don’t know what that means,” he said. “We need to leave?”

“No, not like that,” she said. “Just— weird.”

The door was still open on her side, and she gripped her ribs, holding them steady, and pulled it shut with a grunt. “I’ve never been so excited in my life to check into a total dump. I hope there aren’t, like, dead cockroaches all over the place.”

“’S’long as they got runnin’ water, I’ll be happy,” he said.

“Right,” she said, feeling guilty. He’d been going for so long, doing all the lifting, driving, even stealing… all without any first aid, and without a single complaint. He was so capable, made it seem so normal, that it was easy to forget he was undoubtedly in constant pain, had injuries that would have rendered a normal man unconscious or even dead.

She looked down at the plastic tag on the key. “Number twenty-two,” she said. “Let’s get you fixed up.”


	14. Chapter 14

Bucky parked the truck right in front of the door to their room, checked to see if anyone else was around, and then swung his legs out and slowly unfolded himself to standing. He shut the door and walked around the front of the vehicle to Darcy’s side, opened her door, took the duffel bag off her lap, and then helped her get out, letting her use his metal arm as a grab-bar.

“Got the key?” he asked, and she held it up and sort of jingled it, because that’s what you always do when asked to produce a key. He shut her door and pressed the button on the car’s key-fob to lock the 4Runner, and they heard the door locks engage with a _thunk_. The sun was already coming up, and though it was cool, it felt humid and the sky was cloudy.

“Looks like it might rain,” she said.

“That’d be good, if it sticks around,” he said, as he turned and steered her, still on his arm, to the door, going slow so that she could do her pregnant-style shuffle. “People don’t look too closely at other people, cars, in the rain; they just try to get to where they’re goin’. Makes it easier to go unnoticed.”

The door was old and the red paint on it was dirty and peeling. Darcy stuck the key into the lock, which was right on the knob, and the door cracked open as soon as the bolt was released. Bucky reached over her head and pushed the door open the rest of the way with his flesh arm.

She was hit right away with the smell of old cigarettes, made worse by an overlayer of flowery air-freshener or carpet shampoo. The room was small, with an unpleasant peach shade of paint on the walls, which were bare of artwork. Most of the space was taken up by one large bed, covered by a hideous bedspread with a pattern reminiscent of a Reconstruction-era carpetbag. There was a cheap wooden dresser opposite the bed, with an old CRT television sitting on it, and a small round table by the window next to the door, with a single armchair. The carpet was the color of reddish-brown clay and had numerous dark grey stains. An old lamp with a ripped lampshade sat on a bedside table, made of the same cheap wood as the dresser.

Bucky shut and locked the door and put on the chain, and looked around a little as he set down the big duffel bag. “This’ll do.” The curtains above the table were open, and he went over to them and pulled them shut with the plastic drapery rods; the fabric was a paler shade of clay than the carpet, and dingy— had probably never been cleaned.

Darcy was just standing there, unsure what to do next, and Bucky said, “Go ahead and use the bathroom, sweetheart. Let me know if you need any help.”

“Okay,” she said. She kicked off the pink flip-flops, set the ball cap on the dresser, and shuffled her way over to the bathroom. She pulled the door shut behind her with some difficulty— the wood must have been warped, and it was a poor fit— and the jerky motion gave her a fresh stab of pain. The bathroom was tiny, with just a simple white toilet, a pink pedestal sink, and a white acrylic bath-and-shower combo with a plain white shower curtain. An off-white rubber bathmat was draped over the edge of the tub, and there was one small wrapped rectangle of soap on it.

Darcy pulled down her shorts and underpants and then carefully lowered herself to the toilet, reaching one hand down to the seat to help control the speed of her descent. She could hear the sound of the television come on in the other room.

Standing up was harder, and there was a painful moment when she had to let go of the toilet seat and engage her abs to get the rest of the way up. She flushed the toilet and then winced as she bent slightly to pull her clothes back up, and then again when she had to bend to grab the tiny soap. She unwrapped it and washed her hands, and left the soap on the flat part of the pink basin next to the faucet. She took another minute to rinse out her mouth with water, using her finger as a toothbrush, and then shut the water off. She tried to throw the soap wrapper into the tiny trash can, but she missed, and had to leave it where it lay on the floor.

The door was hard to re-open, and without being able to harness the leverage of her upper body to push on it, she wound up kicking at it with the bottom of her foot. After another feeble kick, Bucky was there, opening it for her, and then he helped her come sit next to him on the edge of the bed, where he’d been watching the television.

The local morning news was on. She felt the urge to lean against him, take some comfort from the presence of his body, but she knew he was hurting too, far more than he was letting on— he had to be— and that his body was not hers to use without invitation.

He’d finally shucked off the tattered remains of his sweatpants, which lay on the carpet at his feet, and was wearing just a pair of dark boxer briefs and the woven short-sleeved shirt, still open down the front. Her eyes wanted to roam over the exposed parts of his body— both to assess his injuries, and for other reasons— but she tried to keep them directed toward the TV, not wanting to make him feel uncomfortable.

“So, um…,” she finally said. “I’m all done in the bathroom if you wanna, you know, let that bladder of steel finally go… and uh… see about your back finally.”

“Right,” he said, still staring at the television, as though it were taking a while for his brain to catch up. Finally he pushed up off the bed and went over to the duffel bag where it was still on the floor by the door. He squatted down and rummaged through it, pulling out the Saran wrap, the canister of salt, and several empty plastic water bottles that they’d saved.

“They got soap in there?” he asked.

“Just a crappy little bar,” she said. “I don’t think there’s any shampoo or anything.”

“It’ll do,” he said. “I shoulda grabbed a bar from the house.”

“We can get some more from Walmart later,” she said. “The guy in the office said there’s one in town.”

“Good,” he said. “Some other stuff we should get, before we head out again.”

“I mean, I fucking hate Walmart,” she said, “but I gotta admit it’s probably the best one-stop shop for a runaway super-soldier…”

He pushed back up with his legs, and her eyes were drawn to them; without his pants on she could see how powerful he was, how much muscle he’d been hiding underneath those sweatpants every day. She also couldn’t help noticing how nice he looked in the dark boxer briefs— the knit fabric stretched tight over the contours of his backside and thighs like a second skin. He caught her looking, and she ripped her eyes back up to his face, embarrassed.

“You, um— you need any help?” she said, going for a distraction.

“I’ll let you know if I do,” he said. “Why don’t you lie down for a bit, if you can. Rest. Drink some more water.”

“Okay,” she said, and tried to push herself back on the bed so that she could recline. He was cradling all his supplies in a pile against his chest and he watched her a second as she struggled to move closer to the head of the bed. He gathered all his stuff in his left arm, freeing his right, and moved to stack the three pillows together against the headboard, which was actually just a cheap piece of veneered particle-board attached to the wall, and made a support wedge for her to lean back on. She pushed herself a little closer, and then leaned back slowly into the pillows, holding her breath until she was settled. Even with the pills starting to work again, leaning back felt horrible, and she rotated experimentally, trying to find a comfortable position.

“You good?” he said, waiting to make sure she was okay.

“Yup,” she lied. “Promise me you’ll call out if you need me. Don’t be a hero.”

He didn’t respond, but placed his hand on her leg for a moment, just above the knee, and then lifted it away, and went to the bathroom, leaving the door open. She heard him lift up the toilet seat, which was followed by the sound of the longest pee she’d ever heard. When it kept going on, she started laughing, which hurt a lot, making her eyes water, but she couldn’t stop.

“Jesus, dude,” she finally called out. “Do I need to call the Guinness Book of World Records? Because I think you just broke one.”

“I don’t know what that is,” he called back, “but I can tell you’re makin’ fun of me.” He was still going, and she could hear the humor in his voice.

“It’s not you I’m laughing at; it’s your epic pee.”

“Don’t make me come back in there,” he said, and he was laughing now too, and she was bummed she couldn’t see his face. Every time he smiled or laughed, it was like a gift. He finally finished, and she heard the toilet flush, and then the sound of the shower turning on.

She wanted to be able to hear him if he needed help, but she didn’t have the remote to turn down the TV— in fact, she wasn’t even sure there _was_ a remote. She cursed under her breath and shuffled her butt back down to the edge of the mattress, amazed by how little she could do without pain. In the movies, when someone broke their ribs, they’d just get them wrapped up tight with bandages and they were good to go, back in the fight. Movies were full of shit.

She had to push herself up to standing again to reach the TV, and then figure out where the volume buttons were on the ancient technology. When she finally got the sound turned down, she could hear Bucky in the bathroom, through the sound of the shower, making what seemed to be noises of stuttered breathing and barely-suppressed pain.

“Bucky?” she called out. “You okay in there?”

She didn’t want to invade his privacy, but he didn’t respond to her, so she shuffled her way to the doorway of the bathroom, and knocked on the wall next to it, keeping her eyes averted. “Bucky?”

He spoke to her in a disjointed grunt: “Can’t— get it— off…”

She allowed herself to look in then, and saw him sitting on the edge of the bathtub, still in the boxer briefs, and he was trying to get the woven shirt off, but it seemed to be stuck to his back— it must have fused to the dried blood and other fluids from his wounds during the drive. He had both arms free from the sleeves, and had been attempting to peel the rest of it away from one side, reaching behind himself and pulling it back like a chef peeling the skin off of a salmon fillet. Where he’d succeeded, the formerly clotted areas had ripped open again and fresh blood was dripping bright red down onto the edge of the tub and the floor.

“Jesus, Bucky,” she said, immediately moving in, ignoring the pain in her ribs as she quickly sat down next to him and pushed his hand away from the shirt. “Stop doing what you’re doing. _Fuck_. You shoulda let me help you. I should’ve insisted. _Goddammit_.”

“Sorry, doll,” he said, and he was panting, like someone coming down from a strenuous run. “Didn’t— wanna make you deal with this.” He sucked in a deep breath. “I know it ain’t pretty.” He had his hands rested on his knees now, and she could see that the flesh one was shaking.

“I don’t care about that,” she said, and she meant it, swallowing down her initial shock over the gruesome scene. “Just want to make sure you’re okay.” Her hands were hovering over his body, wanting to soothe him somehow, but she was afraid of touching him in the wrong place, hurting him more. “Can we— maybe if we get it wet— can you get into the tub?”

His head was hanging down, his long hair hiding his face, but she saw him nod, and he took his right hand off his knee and put it on the edge of the tub, steadying himself, as he swung one leg over into it, while Darcy put her hand into the spray, checking to make sure the water wasn’t scalding. He pushed up, shaking, moved the bulk of his body into the tub and then pulled in the other leg and sat down. He bent his legs so that he could rest his chest against them, the spray of the water coming down on the shirt, and she could see him trying to hold back his physical response to the water beating on him. His entire upper body seemed to be quivering with tension.

She was starting to freak out— she was finally seeing evidence of how much pain he was in— and she said, “Move up a bit, if you can; I’m gonna— I’m coming in too.”

She pushed back the shower curtain the rest of the way and, gritting her teeth against the pain, threaded her arms inside her ratty T-shirt, pulling them elbow-first in through the sleeves, and then used her hands to push it up to her shoulders and back over her head, letting it fall to the ground, little pieces of dried leaves falling out along with it. She pushed off her shorts next, letting them fall to the floor, and when she stepped out of them, she was left standing in her plain white bra and her big purple underpants, chosen nearly twenty-four hours ago when she’d randomly grabbed the first clean things in her drawers.

This wasn’t how she’d fantasized getting undressed with Bucky the first time, but any sense of modesty or sexuality was the farthest thing from her mind as she just focused on getting safely into the tub so that she could help him.

She put her hand on the wall of the shower to steady herself, and stepped over into the tub behind him, feeling the warm spray hit her and soak into her underpants and bra. She reached up, wincing, and pushed the shower head to the side, so that the water was hitting the wall next to them instead of his body, and then shakily sat down, right in front of the faucet. Her legs were bent and on either side of his body, in a role-reversal of their position in the forest. The water pooling around her body on its way to the drain was red from all the blood, and she put her hands into the spray bouncing off the wall to rinse them. Her chest hurt horribly, but it seemed inconsequential compared to Bucky’s situation, and she tried to ignore it.

He had his elbows on his knees now, his face hidden in his hands, and she said, “You okay?” and she saw his head nod. “All right— I’m gonna— I’m going to try to get the shirt off while it’s all wet and soft,” she said.

She was tentative at first, overwhelmed, not wanting to cause more pain with her touch, but once she narrowed her focus to the shirt, and where it was still stuck, it became more clinical, like what she remembered of helping her mom work with a piece of raw meat for a holiday dinner— a matter of putting aside your instinct to squirm, and figuring out what was connected to what, and what needed to go where.

She found the edge of ripped skin where he’d left off flaying himself, and then, slipping her fingers under the fabric of the shirt where it was already detached from him, she slid them over to the line where it still clung to some form of flesh underneath. She was again hit by the similarity to working with meat; it was almost like lifting up the skin of a chicken breast.

Carefully and slowly moving along with her fingers, being as gentle as possible, she was able to release the wet shirt, inch by inch, going from right to left, and then up from the bottom on the left-hand side, until she made it to the upper quadrant where metal replaced flesh, and then the shirt just lifted off and away.

“It’s off,” she whispered, and reached her right arm out, again instinctively wanting to touch some part of him that wasn’t hurting, give him a reassuring press of her hand, but she was too afraid of brushing against his wounds, which were completely exposed now. His shoulders lifted and then fell as he took in a shuddering breath.

She let the wet, bloody shirt fall onto the floor next to the tub, and then took her own deep breath, almost heaving, as she fully took in the state of his back. Now that she was mere inches away, in a brightly-lit room, she could confirm what she thought she’d seen in the forest.

It was clear that he’d taken the main force of the fall on one side. About half of the skin on his back— on the right, up to his midline— was simply gone. What remained didn’t look much different from what you’d see at a butcher shop: raw red meat, with exposed ribs in some places, and dangling shreds of severed tissues. The left side had fared better, with the thick scarred skin around his prosthesis mostly intact, though the remaining skin on that side was striped with deep lacerations, as though some monster had raked him with its claws.

He’d been right about there being leaves stuck in the deeper wounds, and she wished she’d had a pair of tweezers to pick them out, as awful as that sounded in her imagination. Her mind flashed to history class, and the famous footage of children being treated for severe burns after surviving the bombing of Hiroshima— doctors dabbing at their wounds with little pads held in tweezers, while the children wept in pain. It struck her that Bucky hadn’t even seen the end of the war he’d fought in— he was probably being tortured in some kind of Hydra hell when the atomic bombs went off.

She took a deep breath and tried to clear her thoughts— she was getting more upset, when she needed to focus and help him. She noticed that he still had the ripped piece of fabric tied around his right bicep, where he’d pushed Barton’s arrow through, and she found the knot with her fingers, her hands shaking.

“I’m taking this off too,” she said, struggling to loosen it, the wet fabric making it difficult. He hadn’t asked about that wound so far, and she wondered if he had any memory of the battle at all, or if he just wanted to forget it. She finally got it off and tossed the wet strip of fabric out of the tub. She leaned in to examine the wound, which was already starting to fill in, and she pulled her hand back, so tempted to touch it, marveling at the rapidity of its healing.

“Gotta make—” He was pushing out the words with difficulty. “Mix up the salt water. Use the empty bottles. Clean ‘em out first. With the soap.”

She looked around and saw the empty water bottles on the floor nearby, and was able to reach them with her left hand. She removed the caps, lining them up on the edge of the tub. The little bar of soap was already there, waiting, and she picked it up and made some suds in her hands, and then rinsed the soapy water off into the bottles to clean them, one by one.

“I’m gonna switch the water,” she said, and, grunting as she swiveled her body to the side, reached her right hand over to press down on the diverter button on the faucet. The water began to gush from the faucet instead of the shower head, and she put each of the bottles directly into the flow, rinsing them thoroughly.

“Okay,” she said. “Now what?”

“Pour some salt in. Warm water. Shake it up.”

“How much salt?”

“As much as you can. ’Til it won’t dissolve any more.”

“Okay.”

She reached out of the tub again, to grab the blue canister of salt from the floor, flipped the little metal spout, and did the best she could to direct the flow of salt into the narrow mouths of the bottles. One by one, she filled them partway with warm water, capped them, and shook them to dissolve the salt. She tried wrapping her left arm around her ribcage as she shook with her right hand, but found the shaking motion too hard on her still-tender shoulder, and switched sides, awkwardly shaking with her left hand.

“Doin’ okay?” she asked, as she added more water and salt to the first bottle.

“It’s cold,” he said, and she could see that he was shivering— whether from pain or shock, or just the chill of a wet body, she didn’t know. She suspected a super-soldier shouldn’t get cold easily, and it worried her.

“I’m going as fast as I can,” she said.

“Can you turn the shower back on?”

“I will, as soon as I finish the bottles.”

She worked quickly to fill the remaining bottles, ignoring her own pain, adding more salt until the solutions were completely saturated, and replacing the caps on each as she went. The orderly process was helping to steady her mind, and not get overwhelmed by the reality of what was in front of her, the appalling condition of his body.

“Okay, ready,” she said. The closed bottles were all lined up, within easy reach on the floor next to the tub.

“Turn the shower back on. Nice and high. Rinse me out with the water. Get all the leaves out.”

She turned around again and lifted up on the diverter, switching the flow back to the shower head, rotated the knobs to increase the pressure, and then stood up shakily, using the wall to steady herself, careful not to bump into his back.

She had her hand on the shower head, ready to direct the water onto his body. She hesitated, afraid of what was coming next. “Ready?”

“Do it,” he said.

She sucked in a breath and went for it, turning the spray until it was beating down on his back. As soon as the water hit him, he gasped out in pain and his hands shot out to grip the sides of the tub. She wanted to stop, but, as if he could read her mind, he gritted out, “Keep— keep going.”

She kept the water on him, moving it down a bit to direct the pressure at all the areas, wanting to get all the dirt out. The water in the tub was red again, and bits of leaves and other detritus were collecting on top of the drain, slowing the down-flow of bloody water. He was making horrible sounds, like he was trying hard not to scream, holding his breath to keep it in, and gasping for more oxygen when he needed to.

“I— I think maybe it’s done,” she said, wanting desperately to stop.

“Little bit longer,” he said, through clenched teeth. His hands still gripped the sides of the tub, the metal one contracting and flexing almost like a pulse, until there was a cracking sound, and he let go, having crushed the edge with his hand.

“I’m gonna turn it off now,” she said, and turned the spray into the wall again, and shakily sat down into the bloody water behind him, her heart pounding. She reached behind herself with her right hand, feeling around for the big pieces of leaves blocking the drain, and scooped them up, tossing them out of the tub. The red water began to drain again.

His shoulders were rising and falling with his deep breaths, and his inhalations sounded shaky. “Now the salt,” he said, almost whispering, and leaned his body forward a bit more, giving her better access to all of the wounds.

Moving quickly, she uncapped the first bottle, hesitated a second, and then poured its contents into the ravaged meat of his back, trying to saturate all the surfaces. He had his head pressed between his knees now, and every breath sounded like a battle.

“One down, two to go,” she whispered, and she was crying, hating what she was having to do, hurting him.

He made an odd sound then, halfway between a laugh and a cry, and said, “Don’t know how— how I thought I was gonna do all this myself.” She couldn’t respond, trying to hide the sound of her own crying, and he said, “Do the others.”

She uncapped and poured the other two bottles of salt water over him, one at a time, dribbling a little onto the mending hole in his bicep as well, and then threw the empty bottles onto the bathroom floor.

“What now,” she said, sniffling and wiping at her face with the back of her hand.

“Gotta dry the rest of me off, and put on the plastic.”

“Okay. Do you think you can get out?”

“Yeah.” He said it again, nodding. “Yeah. You first.”

She turned off the water, stepped out of the tub onto shaky legs, and grabbed one of the horrible towels off the towel rack, wrapping it tightly around her soaked bra and underpants, tucking in the end to hold it in place. In spite of it being one of the worst bath towels she’d ever touched— it was cheap and thin and rough— she was glad for it; the compression felt good around her chest. She grabbed the other towel, prepared to help him, and said, “Ready?”

His breathing had calmed somewhat, and he slowly pushed himself up, reeling a bit as he did, stabilized himself against the back wall with his flesh hand, and then stepped out of the tub, dripping pink drops onto the floor.

“Let me help you,” she said.

He shuffled over to the sink, facing it, resting his hands on its edge to ground himself, his wet hair dripping into the basin. She’d never seen him so unsteady. “Don’t let the towel touch the wound,” he said, as she came around him and stood by the door, where there was more room.

She didn’t know where to start, but then figured she should do his trunk first, so it’d have more time to dry before putting on the plastic wrap. “Can you— here, turn towards me,” she said, and he put his weight on his metal hand, still on the basin, as he turned clockwise to face her so that she could dry him off.

She dabbed the towel against the muscles of his shoulders and chest, down the scattering of dark hair there that tapered to a line along his center, stopping at the waistband of the boxer briefs. She got the lean muscles of his abdomen and then moved to his arms, avoiding the mending hole from the arrow, and then focused on the metal side of him.

She dried the prosthesis as best she could, taking care not to catch the fabric in between the shifting plates. She hadn’t touched it this much before, and she was in awe of its workings. It was an incredible piece of machinery, an evil work of art. She wanted to linger, studying it, but sensed he was hanging on by a thread— and in any case, her scrutiny was likely unwelcome.

She skipped over his soaked underpants and bent to dry both of his legs, holding back on vocalizing the pain she felt as she crouched, and noticed that, like the bicep wound, the lacerations on his legs were already sealing over or scabbed. She pushed up again and wrapped the towel around his hips, securing the end snugly just as she’d done for her own. Both of their towels were already ruined, covered in spreading pink stains from the bloody water.

He was still supporting himself with his metal hand on the sink, and he pushed off it now, holding his palm above it a few inches, as though to test his balance. He spoke in a low rumble. “Let’s, uh…. let’s go to the other room to do the rest.”

“Okay,” she said, glad to leave the bathroom, which now looked like a crime scene, with the blood-splattered bathtub, the bloody shirt and leaves on the floor, and puddles of pink water everywhere. Before they left, he reached his hand under his towel, using the metal one to hold it in place in the front, and pushed down on his wet underpants, until they fell to the floor and he could step out of them and away. She remembered to grab the box of Saran wrap, and followed him as he walked slowly, with short, shaky steps, out of the bathroom and over to the bed.

He sat down heavily on the edge of the mattress, still holding the edges of the towel together across his hips. His head was hanging down, and he was breathing loudly through parted lips.

“What do I do?” she asked. Her heart was pounding again, partly in response to the stress of the cleanout, but also, she knew, from her acute awareness that he was sitting there naked, but for the crappy little towel.

She knew that he’d dropped his drawers to be more comfortable and dry— not as any kind of come-on— but even with his wounds and his suffering, his body was beautiful… and seeing it bared was affecting her somewhere, beneath all the layers of shock and concern and the pain of her own injuries.

“Rip off a big piece of plastic, long enough to cover it top-to-bottom,” he was saying.

She opened the box and pulled out a long sheet, cursing as it immediately started to stick to itself, ripped that sheet completely off, balled it up and threw it aside, and started again with a fresh piece. This one she carefully tore off, held it lightly by the upper corners, and then looked at him, saying, “I just put it right on?”

“Yeah,” he said, turning sideways on the bed to give her better access. “Just think of it like covering me up with a bed sheet. You don’t gotta press on it.”

She approached his body, praying the plastic wouldn’t bend and stick to itself again before she could get to him, and then, as she got within an inch, static electricity seemed to take over, pulling the bottom of the sheet toward his body and sticking as it came into contact with his flesh. She draped the remainder of it up the large wound, doing her best not to let it wrinkle too much as she laid it down.

“Okay,” she said. “I think it’s pretty good.”

“Rest is easy,” he said. “Take the roll and just start windin’ it around my body, to hold the other sheet in place.” He pushed himself up from the bed shakily, and moved away from it a few feet, re-securing the towel around his hips, so that she could walk all the way around him unobstructed.

She had a feeling this operation was going to be pretty painful for her own wounds, but after what she’d seen him go through in the bathroom, she wasn’t about to complain. She took the roll of plastic completely out of the box and then, clenching her teeth together, started winding it horizontally around his torso, starting on his metal side and walking slowly around him, unwinding the plastic as she went, trying not to knock his towel off. He had his arms raised so she could get around, and held still while she worked. She felt like she was helping someone get ready for a Halloween party.

“Make it tighter,” he said, steeling himself, and she started putting a bit more tension on it, pulling as it stuck to itself going around, trying not to ease off when she could feel him flinching, and stifling back her own grunts of pain as her ribs screamed at the insult she was doing them.

“You hurtin’?” he said, not missing a thing.

“Yeah, but whatever,” she said, still gritting her teeth.

“M’sorry,” he said.

“Shut it.”

He let her finish up in silence; she made enough turns around him to feel it was pretty secure, and then patted the end down under the metal armpit and down his left side.

“You think that’ll hold?” she asked.

“It’s fine,” he said. “How long since you took your pill?” He sat back down on the bed and let out a big exhale, shutting his eyes. He had to be near collapse.

“I don’t know. I took two at around six o’clock, right before I got the key. What time is it now?”

“Don’t know.” The room didn’t have a clock or a radio, and the TV news was over, the current program giving no indication of the time. He sat there a moment, and then pushed up again, holding the towel shut with his right hand, and shuffled over to the curtains, parted them minutely with his metal fingers, and checked the sky. “Probably around seven-thirty. Eight. Why don’t you take one more now, and we can try to sleep for a little.” He was quiet a moment, peering outside. “It’s startin’ to rain.”

She’d taken the opportunity of his back being turned to get rid of her own wet underpants, and to reach around and unhook her bra, letting the straps fall down her shoulders. She pulled her towel away from her body just enough to let the bra fall away and onto the floor by her feet. She stepped away from the pile, tightening the towel, and went to the duffel bag, kneeling down to get inside.

She was already starting to find new normal with her pain— becoming used to its constant presence, at least— and she was mindful of what the motel lady had said about the need to move and breathe, in spite of how it hurt. Still, the idea of lying motionless on the bed for a while was very appealing. She knew she was hurting more than she should be, having taken two pills only a couple of hours earlier, but all the work in the bathroom had cut through any relief afforded by the medicine. Rifling around the bag for the pills, she found the bottle of vodka she’d noticed earlier, and pulled it out.

“Want some?” she asked.

“Nah,” he said, looking over. “Won’t do nothin’ for me. Thought you might want it, for the pain. Didn’t know, at the time, if the pills were any good.”

She pulled out the pill bottle, got a single tablet out, and swallowed it dry, and then unscrewed the cap on the vodka and took a drink straight from the bottle. The liquor was harsh, burning as it went down, and it made her cough a little.

“You okay?” He asked. And then, “Don’t take too much with those pills.”

“I won’t,” she said. “Just wanted a swallow. Help me calm down, sleep.”

She screwed the cap back on and left the bottle out, sitting on the carpet. “How come you didn’t use the vodka on your back?” she asked. “That’s what they always do in the movies.”

“Oh, they do, huh?” he said, moving around the bed, still holding the towel around him. He went slowly back to the bathroom and flicked the light off, and then went to the bed and pulled back the bedspread and the top sheet, pushed all the pillows over to the other side. He got into the bed, one knee and arm at a time, until he was on all fours, the plastic wrap crinkling with his movements, and then eased himself down on his stomach, stretching his legs out with the towel still wrapped loosely around his midsection. He exhaled and said, “Salt water’s better.”

He had his arms on either side of his head, flat on the fitted sheet, bent at ninety-degree angles, and his feet were hanging off the end of the mattress. He seemed more at ease and ready to rest, finally, now that his back was cleaned and wrapped, contained.

She approached the other side of the bed and pulled back the covers on her side and sat down gingerly. She reached back to prop the pillows up behind her, and then pulled her legs up onto the bed and leaned back with her own sigh, equal parts pain, exhaustion, and relief. “God, I hope I can sleep.”

“We should try to rest a few hours and then go out, get some supplies, take off,” he said. “Get some more food. More burgers.”

She made a funny, scoffing sound. “Dude, if I have another colon-blow meal like we had this morning, I’m gonna be shitting my brains out in the car before we stop again.”

Bucky’s head was on its side, his left cheek pressed into the bed, so that he could see her as he lay on his stomach, and he said, “Doll,” and started to laugh, a deep, almost silent response that made his eyes squeeze shut and his body shake.

“What?” she said, and she couldn’t help grinning at his reaction. “Just keepin’ it real.”

That made him laugh even harder, still with very little sound, and he couldn’t stop, though he kept trying to, and each time he tried to control it, he’d seize up again and laugh harder, until finally he had literal tears leaking out of his scrunched-up eyes. She recognized it on some level as exhaustion, but in the context of the hell they’d been through, it felt like the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, and she couldn’t believe she’d made it happen by joking about crapping her pants.

He finally got himself under control, bringing himself down from the laugh-attack, panting and opening his eyes to look at her, a soft, open smile still playing across his face. She found herself sinking down and rolling onto her side to face him, ignoring the pinches of pain she could still feel while waiting for the renewed cushion of the medication, and smiled back at him, staring into his eyes right across from hers, just inches away. She still had the towel around her body, but she pulled the sheet up to cover herself so that she could snuggle down more comfortably.

His eyes were still wet from laughing, and as she watched, his face transformed from the mirth of a moment ago into something so lost-looking that the suddenness of it took her breath away.

“They almost got me,” he said, barely audible, as he stared at her, and the pain in his voice killed her.

“I know,” she said, just as softly, “but they didn’t.” She reached out to touch his face with her hand, her fingers going into the hair above his ear as her thumb stroked his cheekbone, felt the scruff growing below the line of it. His eyes stayed on hers, and he wasn’t really crying, but he was leaking tears, his breath coming heavier and his right hand curling against the sheet as if to grasp it. He seemed to be trying very hard to maintain control. She wondered when he’d last allowed himself to really let go… to feel the pain and anger she knew was in there.

Keeping her hand on his face, she slid her body closer to his, until their faces were almost touching, and he closed his eyes as she brought her lips to his eyelids, tasted the salty wetness there, and his hand came up to wrap around her wrist, and she thought he was going to pull her away, but instead he just squeezed a little, like he was trying to say something. She moved her lips to his open mouth, and he let her kiss him as he took in shuddering breaths, still trying to hold it in.

“ _Shhhh_ …” she said, low and soft, whispering his name, kissing her way back up to his eyes, to the fresh tears there, treating him like he was spun glass, and his fingers loosened a little as his breathing began to slow down.

She could hear the rain now, beating against the window of the little room, and for the first time since they’d been attacked, she felt warm and safe and that nobody could hurt them, and she wanted so badly for him to feel that too, whether or not it was true. She knew that she probably had a lot of emotional fallout from the trauma coming her way down the road, but for now, in this small bubble of reality, all she could feel was gratitude for this chance to rest, together, both of them safe, alive.

His eyes were still closed, and she could feel that exhaustion was finally taking him, and she pulled back just far enough to lay her head down next to his, watching as his face softened, releasing its tension as he sank into sleep. She eased her hand back down to rest it on the bed by her chin, and his hand came with it, still passively gripping her wrist. Her own eyes fell shut and she drifted off to the sound of the rain, the touch of his hand, and the soft pulse of his breathing, safe from the storm.


	15. Chapter 15

She woke up, disoriented, the room still dark with the curtains drawn. The spot next to her in the bed was empty, and she was burrowed into the covers alone. She could hear rustling noises, and she levered herself up with her elbow and forearm to see the outline of Bucky’s body in the dim flashes of light coming from the TV, which was still on, but silent. The plastic wrap around his torso flickered in the light as he crouched over the duffel bag, digging through it, his dark hair hanging down, blocking her view of his face.

She blinked, trying to wake up, and whispered, “Hey.”

He turned his head to look at her, cleared his throat in response and then said, “We should get up... go get some supplies, get back on the road. Those guys’ll be reporting the burglary soon, if they haven’t already.”

“What time is it?” she asked.

“A little after one.” A moment later he clarified, “Afternoon.”

He tossed a bundle of clothes onto the bed, near her body. “See if you can use any of that,” he said, and then stood, holding his own bundle loosely over his crotch as he made his way over to the bathroom. She followed him with her eyes, saw the smooth shape of his bare body in the low light of the room.

She turned her head away then, toward the curtains, not wanting to stare, though he didn’t seem very concerned with his own nudity, for someone who was so guarded in other ways— what little he did to cover up seemed to be for her sake, as if he wasn't quite sure what was appropriate around a twenty-first-century woman.

It was still raining outside, and she listened to the calming sound of it, and then heard the bathroom door being pulled shut. She took a few deep breaths, testing the limits of her pain. The extra pill was still doing some good.

She pushed herself up further and sorted through the little pile of clothes on the bed— there was a pair of men’s briefs and some black athletic shorts, both size medium, and a large T-shirt. She pushed back the covers and grunted as she pulled the underpants on, grimacing through the discomfort as she lifted her butt to pull them all the way up. They fit surprisingly well, notwithstanding the extra bulk of fabric in front for the fly. The shirt and shorts were fine too, though she felt self-conscious without a bra. At least it was a black shirt, turning her chest into a shapeless dark blob and giving her some measure of modesty— it only had to get her through a short trip to Walmart, so it was good enough.

She wished she could take a shower— her skin and hair felt heavy with dust and sweat, and she knew that she smelled bad— but she doubted she had the stamina to stand up that long, or the range of motion to deal with her hair. She pulled herself to the edge of the bed, letting her legs dangle over, and finger-combed through her snarls. It was a tangled mess from falling asleep on it damp and unbraided.

She heard the toilet flush, and then the water of the sink running, and then Bucky emerged, wearing a very similar outfit to hers— all black— only with long athletic pants instead of shorts.

“We look like we’re in some weird cult,” she said. “We just need matching shoes.”

“Gotta remember to get shoes,” he said. “Can’t go places, barefoot. Drivin’s not so great either.”

“Fuck, I didn’t even think about that,” she said, realizing that he must have been driving for hours without any shoes on. “I can drive, after I take my pills.”

“’S’okay,” he said. “Don’t want you puttin’ extra strain on your chest... and anyway, you shouldn’t be drivin’ when you’re on that stuff— I can tell it knocks you out.”

“We should make a list,” she said. “Starting with shoes.” She carefully pushed off the mattress and made her way to the nightstand on Bucky’s side of the bed, and checked in the drawer. There was nothing inside, not even the standard Gideon Bible often found in American hotel rooms. She shuffled over to the dresser and checked there too, but all the drawers were empty. “I think this may be the first time in my life that I haven’t had access to a writing device of any kind,” she said, frustrated.

“We can check in the glove box; maybe there's somethin’ in there you can use,” he said.

“Okay,” she said, and she felt oddly uncomfortable again, the two of them just standing there on opposite sides of the room, unsure where they stood with each other after the intimacy they’d shared before falling asleep. She had the urge to touch him, even in just a small way, to reassert the connection, but she didn’t want to push.

As though he could read her mind, he drifted over to where she was standing by the dresser. Looking down at her, he reached out hesitantly with his flesh hand, looping a lock of her hair with his finger, and then he ran the back of his fingers along her jawline, near her ear, just a soft, barely-there touch. She wanted to lean into it, like a cat seeking a deeper scratch under its chin.

“How’s your ribs,” he said, his voice soft. He was close enough that she could feel the pull of him, like a magnet. She’d joked about it before, but the tug felt as real as any kind of measurable phenomenon…

“Pill’s wearing off, but I’m getting used to it,” she said. She wanted to move in, put her arms around him, but was afraid to touch him where he was wrapped in plastic— knew his back was off-limits indefinitely. “I might try holding off for a while… they’re already half gone. I can get some Tylenol or ibuprofen at the store and bomb myself with that. Save the good stuff for when I really need it.”

He moved in a little more, putting his face into her hair at the top of her head, as his hand trailed down her neck, running softly along her skin where it curved into her shoulder. It felt like the closest they could get to an embrace without involving his back, and as her hands reached out to grasp his hips, she flashed back to the way she’d tugged on him, right before he’d kissed her, back in his room at Stark’s place, how she’d felt his body responding to her… 

She closed her eyes and sighed.

“You okay?” His voice was muffled in her hair, and she could feel his warm breath.

“Yeah,” she said. “Just wish I could give you a real hug right now. Or, you know, more.”

“You don’t gotta give me anything,” he said. His flesh hand was still moving on her skin, his thumb running along her collarbone on that side— just a simple little movement that was making heat pool down low in her body, and she sighed again, and dropped her forehead into his chest, right at the base of his neck.

“I know I don’t,” she murmured. “I’m saying I want to.” And then, emboldened: “If it weren’t for our wounds, I’d probably be attacking you right about now.”

“Oh yeah?” he said, tilting his face so that his cheek was resting on her, nuzzling her head with his jaw. His thumb was still tracing a line back and forth on her collarbone, so slowly, and it was building an ache in her, an almost unbearable feeling of saturation, at the same time needing to be filled, and it was heady, that such a simple touch could be so provocative, and she wondered if he felt it too…

“We should go,” he said, and he retreated a bit, taking a last moment to curl another ringlet of her hair in his index finger and then release it. Something about the movement made her feel weak-kneed again, like she’d felt after that first hug in the kitchen, when she’d had to sit down.

“God,” she said. “I don’t know how you’re doing that, but it’s like all you have to do is stand there and breathe, and my pants are on fire.”

He chuckled, and then he looked almost embarrassed, dropping his gaze. “You tryin’ to sweet-talk me?” he said, but he was backing away, some part of him uncomfortable.

“I just tell it like it is,” she said. She said it with humor, but she really wasn’t joking. The man was working some kind of voodoo on her, and he wasn’t even trying. Or didn’t seem to be. She suspected Bucky Barnes had had all the moves, back in the day, and maybe some of that still remained, a subconscious dance— ‘scenery’, he’d called it, like the old-fashioned terms of endearment that sounded so natural when they left his lips, though they had no place in a twenty-first-century man.

But unlike the way she’d felt when other men put the moves on her, there was nothing about this that made her feel she was being toyed with. She wasn’t being persuaded, manipulated… it was more like they were circling each other equally, their orbits irregular but drawing nearer over time, destined to converge. It was intoxicating.

He’d crouched down to zip up the duffel bag, and he asked, “Those clothes gonna work for now?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I mean, I feel pretty trashy going out braless, but maybe I’ll fit right in at the Walmart.”

He chuckled and said, “Trashy ain’t the word I woulda used for you not wearin’ a bra.”

“Oh yeah?” she said playfully, echoing his comment from before. “What would you call it?”

“Rousing,” he said, looking up at her with a naughty little grin— a face she hadn’t seen on him before, but, like so many of his emerging words and expressions, it fit… like his subconscious was tuning some inner capacitor, and now and then he’d find the right frequency, throwing off the static that clouded him so much of the time.

She cracked a smile, unable to control it, and found that she was almost blushing. He stood up with the duffel, grabbed the ball cap off the dresser, and said, “Ready?”

“Yup,” she said, toeing on the big pink flip-flops. “Let’s do this.”

<<>>

She’d found an old ball-point pen in the glove compartment, along with a gas receipt that was big enough to use for a shopping list. She scribbled circles on it, trying to get the ink in the pen to flow, using the duffel bag in her lap as a desk, and the manual for the 4Runner, also from the glove box, slipped under the receipt so that she could press down on it.

The ink finally came through, and she flipped the receipt over to the blank side, and began to make two lists, one for each of them. The windshield wipers were thwacking back and forth, the rain having picked up since the early morning.

“You should go in first,” he said, checking for traffic before he pulled back onto the two-lane highway that led into town. “Get me some shoes, and a long-sleeved shirt. And some work gloves.”

She was writing it down, and said, “Won’t that look weird? Long-sleeved shirt in the summer? Gloves?”

“Nah,” he said. “Nobody’s gonna notice. Workin’ guys wear all kinds of stuff, ‘specially in the rain.”

“We need toothpaste,” she said. “I’m dying to brush my teeth.”

“Don’t put too much on your list,” he said. “You’re not gonna be wantin’ to push a heavy cart. Leave most of it to me.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’m just putting down shoes, shirt, and gloves for you; some clothes for me— I’m guessing you don’t wanna have to go into the ladies’ underwear department— oh my God, you would look like a total creeper around the bras and undies, with your gloves on; they’d call security for sure…”

“You’re probably right,” he said. “Give me all the other stuff, though.”

“Okay… um, food? We still have the rest of those peanuts… and the granola… Oh— wet wipes… like, a can of them? Do you know what they are?”

"I think so," he said. "Street people use 'em to clean up sometimes. Never seen 'em in a can..."

“Don't worry about it," she said. "I'll grab some if I see them."

“Don’t get too much,” he repeated. “We don’t wanna be in there too long.”

“I won’t,” she said. “I’m probably gonna be freaking out, anyway, wanting to leave.”

“Matches,” he said. “Water.”

“Okay,” she said, writing it down.

They were nearing the little town now, passing through a controlled intersection after which the highway widened and divided, with two lanes on each side, and traffic picked up a bit. After the feeling of being alone and secure in the bubble of the motel, being around other people was making Darcy feel terribly vulnerable— exposed, as though they had a sign on their vehicle that said: _Criminals! On the run!_ She wanted to retreat back to the haven of the room, where nobody existed beyond their private reality.

Manmade structures had been sparse on the outskirts, the landscape dominated by trees and bleak, unused land, but now they were passing homes, a school with a large athletic field, a tiny old church.

“The guy at the motel said it was by a Home Depot,” she said, scanning for signs. They were passing denser areas of homes, and she could see a business district ahead. They passed the McDonald’s they’d eaten at that morning, before checking in. There was a strip-mall set back from the road, which she knew wouldn’t be it, but she peered at the massive signpost’s list of stores anyway.

“That’s not it,” she said.

They went under a highway overpass, and the businesses began to thin out again, and she was worried they’d somehow missed it, when all of a sudden she saw it on the right— the familiar orange sign for Home Depot, and, underneath that, a smaller blue one for Walmart.

“There it is,” she said, pointing.

Bucky put on the blinker and got into the right-turn lane, and then made his way down the frontage road to the gigantic parking lot. She found it kind of funny, how conscientious he was with his turn signals— courteous driving didn’t really scream _legendary badass assassin_ — but she knew he was being smart; they couldn’t afford to get pulled over for something stupid.

The two mega-stores were side-by-side, set well back from the road, with trees and empty land on the other three sides. Both of the parking lots were packed. A few people were dashing from their cars toward the storefronts, trying not to get wet in the rain.

“Who knew there were even this many people living here?” she said, feeling her nerves rising again. She was scanning the lot, chewing on her right thumbnail.

“I’m gonna drop you off at the door, but I’m not gonna park close,” he said. “I’ll be watchin’. When you come back out, I’ll drive right up and get you.”

“Okay,” she said. She looked down at the list, reading through the items, as though she could better prepare by looking at the words again. “Hey, what size do I get?” she said. “I’m guessing an extra large for the shirt, but what about the shoes?”

“Don’t know,” he said. “I, uh… I haven’t done much shoppin’. When I was on the street, I didn’t… I had to steal most stuff. Wasn’t lookin’ at sizes. Got some boots from an army surplus place, but I just held ‘em up to my feet. After Steve came and got me, he took care of all that… got me clothes… whatever I needed. Him and Sam.”

She looked over at him. “Are you sure you’re gonna be okay in there? I mean, stores like this… they’re kind of overwhelming sometimes, even if you’re used to it.”

He was turning the wheel, coming up to the front of the store. “Don’t worry about me,” he said, scanning the entrance.

“Okay, so… shoes,” she said. “I have an idea. Don’t let me out yet; pull over, up here.” She pointed to the curb ahead, beyond the front doors. “Put it in park,” she said. “I need your foot.”

He pulled over and parked, and she said, “Gimme,” and gestured to his bare foot, resting in the footwell by the gas pedal. A couple walked by the truck, toward the store, and Bucky tipped his head down, hiding his face, the reaction automatic.

“What’re you gonna do?” he asked, and she rolled her eyes and gestured again.

“Just give it here,” she said.

With difficulty, he pulled his right leg up, bending at the knee, so that his foot was resting on the edge of his seat, near the center console. Darcy shoved the duffel bag down into her footwell, and then reached over and grabbed Bucky’s ankle, pulling his foot over to rest on her bare thigh.

“Ow,” he said, though she knew he wasn’t really hurt. “My leg don’t really bend that way, doll.”

“Only take a sec,” she said, and used the ballpoint pen to trace the outline of his foot right onto her skin, on the top of her thigh. She released his foot, and he took it back, threading it back down to the pedals of the truck. “Am I a fucking genius, or what?” she said, gesturing to the wavy outline on her leg.

He just smiled, his face a little sad, and then he leaned in, pulling her jaw to him with his flesh hand, and gave her a soft kiss that made something balloon and then burst in her stomach. He drew back, keeping it from going further, and then opened his eyes and pulled his lower lip into his mouth for a moment, as though to taste it.

“Be careful,” he said. “Remember: not too much. Be quick.”

“Okay,” she said, still feeling dazzled by the impromptu kiss, but also less nervous because of it— she was a fucking superstar, and she was going to kick Walmart’s ass. She ripped off the part of the list with her items on it, and put the other piece into one of the cup holders. She slipped the ripped paper and a wad of cash into the pocket of her shorts.

“See you soon,” she said. She took a breath and held it, bracing herself, and popped the door, the sound of the heavy downpour bursting in. She edged out, stepped fully into the rain, and then turned to shut the door behind her. She saw him give her a nod, through the window, as she made a little rain-shield over her eyes with her hand to watch him go, and then he drove off, heading toward the rear of the lot.

<<>>

She wound up buying quite a bit more than was on her list— apparently, the universal law of shopping held true even if you were on the run, in pain, and working against a ticking clock.

She’d taken care of Bucky’s clothes first, grabbing a couple of long-sleeved plaid shirts that would cover up his prosthesis. She used the outline on her thigh to choose a pair of cheap athletic shoes, and then stopped by the home improvement section for the work gloves. She had no idea what size to get, but figured they needed to be big to fit over the metal hand, and got the largest ones they had.

Bucky had been right about pushing the cart. When she’d first started, she’d foolishly thought, _it’s not so bad_ — she could tolerate the pain, and let momentum do as much work for her as possible— but after just ten minutes in the store she was hurting pretty bad, and knew she needed to wrap it up.

She was also starting to feel nervous, hyperaware of the press of strangers around her, regular families doing their shopping, eyes looking at her… she felt itchy and obvious and like everything about her was telegraphing signals of guilt as she kept her head down and tried to focus on quickly going through her short list.

She hurried through the ladies’ department, going for cheap knits: T-shirts and yoga pants. Moving onto lingerie, she quickly grabbed a couple packages of Hanes underpants and two cheap Playtex full-figure bras. She passed the socks on her way out of the undergarment section, and swore, realizing that she also needed shoes for herself, and had to backtrack to the shoe department to pick up some sneakers.

She’d planned to get some travel-size bathroom items, but she knew she’d already overdone it and needed to get out. She made a last quick stop to get a canister of Wet-Ones, and an industrial-size bottle of generic ibuprofen, and then headed to the checkout before she could do any more damage to herself.

Even with choosing the shortest line, there were still a couple of people ahead of her, and she used the time to grab a few more things from the checkout aisle: chewing gum, several triple-packs of Reese’s peanut butter cups, and a stupid celebrity tabloid magazine.

She wanted more time; she was thinking of the other things she wished she’d grabbed: a notebook, pens… God, what if she needed tampons soon? Hopefully they’d be in a better situation before that became a necessity…

It was her turn to check out, and she moved up, fighting tears as she bent to remove the items from the bottom of the cart. She avoided eye contact with the checker lady, who was just as content to ignore Darcy after her initial, “Find everything okay,” only speaking to her again to ask if she needed bags. If she was irritated that Darcy was using cash instead of a debit card, she didn’t show it.

Seriously in pain by the time she got her receipt, Darcy used her foot, still in the pink flip-flops, to push on the bottom rung of the cart, moving it forward a couple feet at a time, only using her hands to adjust its trajectory each time. She was sure she looked like she was deranged or on drugs, but she really didn’t give a shit. She was never going to see any of these people again.

It was raining heavily outside, and she stayed under the protective overhang of the entryway until Bucky pulled up in the 4Runner a minute later. She pushed at the cart with her foot again, trying to angle it over to the trunk. Bucky got out and quickly took over for her. He had one of the extra shirts from the duffel bag wrapped around his metal arm, hiding most of it, though the hand was still exposed. They were both getting soaked in the rain.

“Go ahead and get in,” he said, while he loaded the bags into the trunk. She was fumbling with the door handle, unable to muster the leverage to even open the goddamned door, when she felt him come up behind and pop it for her. He held the door open and let her hang onto him while she lowered herself in, and then he shut it once her feet were safely inside. He was around to the other side a few seconds later, and got back into the truck.

“You okay?” he said, shifting into drive and pulling away from the curb. She wasn’t buckled up, and made no move to do so. Her wet hair was dripping down her back, making the seat wet.

“Might’ve overdone it a bit,” she said, breathing painfully, still holding her ribs with her arm.

“ _Dammit_ ,” he said, softly. “I’m sorry, doll; I should’ve—”

“It’s okay,” she said, cutting him off. “It’s done. I can relax now.” A moment later, she said, “Aw, _shit_.”

“What is it?” he said, looking over quickly.

“I left my Reese’s in the bag.”

“What?”

“My peanut butter cups. I wanted one right away.”

He chuckled as he relaxed. “I’ll get you your candy.”

“And my magazine…”

“Anything you want,” he said. “You get some more medicine?”

“Yeah,” she said, adjusting her butt painfully in the seat, “but I think I’m gonna take some of the good stuff. I sorta fucked up in there. Feel worse than I did this morning.” She bent forward stiffly, to fish the Vicodin bottle out of the duffel bag. “How’s your back doing?”

Bucky chose a parking spot far in the rear of the lot, where the nearest car was more than ten spaces away. “Hurts less,” he said, but didn’t go into detail.

“Well, don’t be dumb in there, like I was,” she said. “Like, know your limits or something.” She shook out two of the tablets, looking down into the bottle to count how many were left: only three. She considered for a moment, and then reluctantly returned the two pills to the container. “Can you get me the new pills after all? And my chewing gum…”

He put the truck into park but left it running, pressed the button to pop the trunk, and then got out, shutting the door to keep the rain out. She could hear him digging through the bags in the trunk and rearranging stuff, and then the trunk slammed shut and he got back in, holding one of the bags and the pair of men’s gym shoes.

“I forgot to buy you socks,” she said.

“There’s some in there,” he said nodding to the duffel bag at her feet, “but don’t worry about it for now. I’ll get some more.” He handed her the blue Walmart bag. “Here’s your candy.”

All three packs of the Reese’s were in the bag, along with her ibuprofen, the gum, and the shitty celebrity magazine. Underneath was one of the long-sleeved shirts and the work gloves. She took out the candy and pills and handed the bag back to him. He took out the shirt, ripped the tag off, pulled it on over his damp T-shirt, and started to button it up, while Darcy unpackaged the ibuprofen and examined the dosage information on the side.

“I think I’ll try four,” she said. He was finishing up with the buttons, and Darcy noticed how dextrous the metal fingers of the prosthesis were, compared to the few other prosthetic hands she’d seen up close. It was frustrating that such incredible tech was being developed not for humanitarian reasons, but to create more effective tools for totalitarian assholes…

She tapped four orange tablets out of the bottle and reached down, wincing, to get a fresh bottle of water from the duffel bag. He was leaning over in his seat now as well, trying to maneuver himself to put the gym shoes on.

“They fit okay?” she asked, cracking open the water and taking a long drink. She swallowed the pills, one at a time, and took another drink, and then started ripping open one of the Reese’s wrappers.

“Seem to,” he said. “That was a good idea you had, about the sizing.”

“I know,” she said, grinning, and then shoved an entire peanut butter cup into her mouth. “You want one?” she asked around a mouthful of chocolate, holding out the package to him.

He wordlessly took one, removed it from the dark brown paper cup it clung to, and popped it into his mouth, and then leaned over to put the other shoe on. He stopped after a second and straightened up, chewing, his eyes shut. His lips were closed and he was breathing through his nose and he finally swallowed and then exhaled, opening his eyes.

“Holy shit,” he said, staring straight ahead.

“I know, right?” she said. “Reese’s are the bomb.” Then she looked over, worried, and said, “Wait, this isn’t gonna be like the hot dog, is it? Did I just squash your heart with a peanut-butter-cup memory?”

“No, doll,” he said, affectionately, and looked at her for a moment before staring forward again at the deluge on the windshield. “I just— I haven’t had— It’s been a long time…” He seemed to be having trouble articulating whatever was on his mind.

He took another deep breath and then let it out, a sound of resignation. “Sometimes I forget there’s things… good things I can have. Not just candy, but.” He sighed. “I mean, I never woulda even thought to buy somethin’ like this. It’s not… necessary.” He stopped, and she held the wrapper out to him again.

“There’s one more in here,” she said. “And more where that came from.” She shook the wrapper at him, insisting: “You’re allowed to have Reese’s peanut butter cups… Darcy Lewis decrees it.”

He was lost in his head somewhere, eyes forward, listening to the rain. Finally he turned to look at her, his expression vulnerable, and she worried they really were going to have a hot-dog moment, but she remembered what Sam had said: that it was a good thing, for him to connect with those feelings, and she just smiled softly at him, trying to communicate with her eyes that whatever it was, whatever he was feeling, it was okay— she wasn’t going to freak out.

Finally he reached over and took the remaining piece of candy, which caused her to grin more widely at him, not caring at all that he was getting a close-up view of her gappy front teeth, which probably had chocolate in them.

He unwrapped the second piece of candy and shoved it into his mouth, shutting his eyes as he chewed, and making a sound of pleasure that sent a jolt of heat to her lady parts.

“Dude,” she said, eyes wide. “You can _not_ be making sounds like that, or I’m gonna have to do something scandalous to myself in the car while you’re shopping. And I know it’s raining and all, which would give me some cover, but I don’t usually do that stuff in public.”

He started laughing, his mouth full of candy, eyes still shut, and he finally swallowed, and then opened his eyes and looked at her, licking his lips slowly and rubbing them together, and then finally exhaled with another satisfied and very deliberate panty-dropping sound, his eyelids soft, a half-smile pulling at one corner of his mouth.

“Oh my God,” she said, smacking him lightly with her left hand. “You are so bad.”

He shook with laughter, his eyes all crinkled up in a way that made her melt, and then he bent over again and finally got the other shoe on.

<<>>

Bucky left the 4Runner parked where it was, away from any other cars and potentially-prying eyes, stuck the ball cap on his head, and went off in the rain to get the rest of the supplies. Darcy kept the doors locked and tried to distract herself with the celebrity magazine, paging through it without really seeing the pictures or reading the captions, while the heavy rain beat down on the windshield.

The action of turning the pages felt like enough— a normal thing to do, for a normal person, waiting in a car. Not something a criminal would do, for that was what she was now, she’d realized: undeniably aiding and abetting a felon.

She’d certainly had a chance to escape by now, if she’d wanted to. Far from doing that, she’d willingly assisted him… _and rather enjoyed some of it_ , she thought, reaching up her fingers to touch the pillowy softness of her lips, shutting her eyes and going back to his kiss from a half-hour ago.

If Darcy was honest with herself, she wasn’t all that worried about the criminality of the past twenty-four hours. They hadn’t hurt anybody; they hadn’t done anything that couldn’t be undone, or at least paid for. She assumed that at some point they’d be reconnecting with their friends and colleagues, who, being affiliated with not only the Avengers but also Stark Industries, enjoyed a certain amount of privilege in making some kinds of things just ‘go away.’ She recalled reading about how quickly all the threatened lawsuits in the wake of the Battle of New York had evaporated, once Tony Stark had started throwing money at things.

That was assuming they ever made it back: for now, it seemed that nothing was certain, or even planned. She knew that Bucky wanted to do something about the vehicle, and move on from this town, but beyond that, she had no idea what was next. But she trusted him, and that trust was keeping her sane.

Maybe Jane would be screaming at her right now— _don’t be stupid; get out of there; call someone_ — but Jane hadn’t lived through it, the horrible events at the Redoubt. Having a gun to her head… watching Bucky try to end his life, only to transform into the Soldier. Knowing she was dead. Falling from the sky.

Everything Bucky had done, since they’d woken on the forest floor together, told her three critical things: she was safe with him— safer than she’d been at the supposedly secure compound. She could trust him. And… he cared about her. She was sure of it. Everything else could go fuck itself.

<<>>

Bucky came back with twice as many bags as Darcy, and the truck wobbled a bit as he loaded them all into the trunk, and then rummaged around in the bags again. He was soaked through by the time he got back into the truck, his hair dripping as he settled into his seat. He was holding a couple of black-handled screwdrivers, which he put into the cup holder, and he dropped a bundle of multicolored washcloths into her lap.

“Shoulda bought an umbrella,” he joked. “Rip me off one of those washcloths, willya?” he said, as he pulled off the wet button-down and gloves and tossed them in the back.

She used her hands to snap the little plastic fastener that held the washcloths together in a stack, and then removed the one on top, ripping off the large papery tag on it before handing it over to Bucky. He was pushing his wet hair back out of his face, and he used the cloth to dry off a little, running it over his face and neck, and then the metal of his left arm and hand.

“Washcloths,” she said, running her hands over the next one down on the stack. “Seems like such a luxury all of a sudden.” She picked it up and held it to her nose, loudly inhaling the smell of raw, unused terry cloth. “Ahhhh….”

“Hey, did you get shampoo?” she asked, and kept going, not waiting for an answer. “I would kill for a shower. Or a bath, I guess. Wash my hair. Maybe I should just stand outside in the rain for a few minutes." She thought back to the condition they’d left the tub in— all that blood. “We should probably clean up the bathroom, before we leave,” she said. “That lady in the office got a pretty good look at me. She already thinks you’re beating me; she’ll probably think you killed me, and drove off with my body parts in the trunk.”

“Already thought of that,” he said, starting up the truck. “Got some trash bags.”

“To put my body in?” she joked, and he looked at her, opening his mouth like he was going to say something, but then changed his mind and focused on exiting the parking lot.

_Jeez, maybe he’s actually done something like that before_ , she thought, and then immediately corrected herself: not him— the Soldier, on some evil fucker’s orders. She really needed to stop joking about dead bodies.

They drove back to the motel in relative silence. Darcy was cuddling the little yellow throw-pillow with her forearms, trying not to pass out to the hypnotic sound of the windshield wipers.

“We should clean up the room and head out right away,” said Bucky, rousing her from her haze, as they neared the turnoff for the motel. He chuckled. “Store clerk back there probably already called the cops on me, what with the collection of stuff I bought.”

“What, like a tarp and a shovel and some lye?” _Hey, no murder jokes, remember?_

But Bucky just snickered and said, “No, but close enough. Your basic fugitive’s shopping list.”

“So what’s the plan?” she asked, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. The ibuprofen was working a little bit, but it was nowhere near as effective as the Vicodin had been. Where the ibuprofen was dialing down the pain somewhat, the Vicodin had not only knocked it down, it had also somehow made her _care_ less about it, when she did feel it.

“I remembered something,” he said, exiting the highway onto the frontage road. He had a little dent between his eyebrows. “But I gotta take a look at the maps I got.” He pulled the truck around to the rear of the motel this time, out of view from either the frontage road or the converted house-office. He reached into the back and retrieved the wet shirt he’d thrown there, and pulled it back on, not bothering with the buttons this time. “Hang tight here a couple minutes,” he said, leaving the truck on. “Be right back.”

He took the two screwdrivers out of the cupholder, got out of the truck and shut the door as quietly as he could, and then jogged off in the rain, in the direction of the empty land behind the motel.

Darcy dug through the Walmart bag in her lap and found the pack of peppermint gum she’d bought. She unwrapped two sticks at once, and chewed on them with a satisfied sigh. It was the closest she’d gotten to cleaning her teeth since Stark’s place, and it helped her feel more human.

He was back in five minutes, holding something under his shirt with his left arm pressed against it. When he got back into the truck, he opened the shirt and dropped a couple of license plates into the footwell by Darcy’s feet, next to the duffel bag.

“Where’d you get those?” she asked.

“Car up on blocks, way back behind the office. Scouted it out before you woke up. Just needed a screwdriver.”

“You went out when I was sleeping?” she asked, surprised. It freaked her out a little, that he could have just left, taken the truck and been gone forever, without her even waking up.

“Didn’t wanna wake you,” he said. “You need to heal; sleep when you can.”

“Like you don’t,” she said, feeling just a twinge of irritation, even though she knew he was just looking out for them, doing what needed to be done, and that her ill humor was unfair: more about her own insecurity than anything he’d done wrong.

“I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll rest later.” He drove around to the front of the motel, parking by their room. They were alone in the lot.

“But wait,” she said, “When I woke up, you were— I mean—” She didn’t want to sound like a weirdo, pointing out his state of undress when she’d seen him by the duffel bag, but the timeline didn’t make sense. “You were, you know— naked when I woke up, so I assumed you’d just gotten up.”

“I had,” he said. “I got up a bunch of times. Sat by the window for a while, couldn’t sleep. Finally threw on some clothes and went to scout. Came back and you were still sleepin’, so I stripped off the wet clothes, tried to go back to sleep.”

“What about your arm? Weren’t you worried someone’d see you?”

“Had a shirt wrapped around it. It was raining. Nobody was gonna bother me.”

“Did you get any rest at all?” she asked incredulously. He’d seemed so exhausted when he’d first fallen asleep, almost like he’d been knocked out.

“Sure,” he said. “Couple hours. Don’t usually sleep more than that, any one time.”

“That sucks,” she said, but he just shrugged, and she muttered, “Well, I’m glad I didn’t wake up while you were gone; I would have totally freaked out, thinking you’d run off, ditched me here for good.”

He stared at her, a furrow between his eyebrows again. The rain was beating down on the parked car, and she felt caged in for a moment. “Darcy,” he said, and it sounded so odd; he so rarely used her given name— “I would never just leave you somewhere.” He sounded serious, almost upset. “You know that, right?”

She looked down at her lap, unable to maintain eye contact when he was looking at her like that. It almost felt like they were having a fight, but she didn’t even know what it was about. “I guess so. I mean, yeah. I do.” She let out a deep breath and said, “It’s nice to hear it, though, anyway.”

She looked up at him again, and he still had that stricken look on his face, and he said, “C’mere,” and leaned over in his seat to pull her face to him, and he kissed her, soft and slow, and with a tenderness that made her eyes sting. He pulled back just an inch, resting his forehead against hers, and smoothed his hand over her hair.

“You’re minty,” he said, his voice low and sexy, and she couldn’t help smiling then, the tension broken.

“Jealous? I brushed my teeth with gum.”

“Gimme a stick,” he said, and she reluctantly pulled her head away to dig the pack of gum back out, and handed him a piece.

He unwrapped it and chewed for a few seconds, and then said, “Let’s go clean up and get out of here.”

<<>>

Bucky spent about twenty minutes cleaning the room, most of it dealing with the mess in the bathroom. He used the already-stained towels to mop up the blood on the sides of the tub and on the floor, and threw them into a big black contractor’s bag, along with the ruined shirt he’d stolen from the bachelor party, their other wet, ruined clothes, the salt container, and the empty water bottles.

The rest of the room was fairly clean, though the fitted sheet had some pinkish stains on it, probably from the bloody water they hadn’t fully toweled off their bodies. Bucky ripped the sheet off and added that to the trash bag, and pulled up the ugly bedspread to hide its absence. All that remained were the ruins of his grey sweatpants, and Darcy’s wet underthings, still in a pile in front of the TV.

“You wanna keep these?” he asked. “Clean ‘em up, when we get to wherever we end up?”

“No,” she said, and he scooped them up, added them to the trash. Darcy grabbed the ball cap he'd taken off, and the bottle of vodka. The roll of Saran wrap was on the dresser, and she picked it up. “Should we bring this?” she asked.

“Maybe,” he said. “Yeah, might as well.”

She handed it over, along with the vodka and the cap, and he put it all in the duffel bag and zipped it up. She looked around, not seeing anything else. They’d been there for less than a day, but it felt like a lot had happened in that room.

“Let’s go,” said Bucky. “Gimme the key.”

She handed it over, and he walked ahead of her to the door, held it open for her as she walked through. After he came out, he turned around, locked it, and then bent down and slid the key under the gap at the bottom of the door, back into the room.

It was still raining hard, and he moved quickly, helping Darcy into the truck and buckling her in, and then loaded the other bags into the trunk. He got inside and shut the door and looked over to her. “All set?”

She nodded to him, squeezing the pillow against her chest, and then he started up the truck, backed up in the lot, and drove them away from the motel, back into the clouds and the grey and the rain.


	16. Chapter 16

“See if you can find White Plains on here,” he said, handing her a paper road map. They were heading back toward town, going east on the state highway. She put the map in her lap, and opened up the canister of wet wipes that she’d stowed in the well of her door, pulling one out to clean her hands. They’d gone through another three-pack of peanut-butter cups, and her fingers were sticky from melted chocolate.

“Glad you got those,” he said.

“Right? We should get more, next chance we get.”

“I meant the wipes,” he said. “We can use them for the car when we dump it.” His eyes crinkled as he glanced over to her. “I’m glad you got the candy, too.”

“White Plains,” she repeated, opening up the map. “That’s, like, pretty close to Manhattan, right? Kind of a richie-rich place?”

“Don’t know,” he said.

“Why do we want to go there?”

“I remember a house.” He frowned. “I think I could find it again. Somethin’ in my memory’s tellin’ me it ain’t like a regular house. Might be empty.”

“What do you mean, not like a regular house? And why would it be empty? Is it like a vacation rental or something?”

“Not sure,” he said. “Could be an old Hydra place. Maybe it don’t even exist— maybe I just dreamed about it, or I’m gettin’ it messed up with some other memory, but it’s been naggin’ at me… the city, the… idea of how to get there.”

He must have taken her silence for skepticism, because he sighed and said, “We’re gonna run out of money too fast if we keep payin’ to sleep, and my brain’s tellin’ me to check this place out. It’s worth a look, if it’s a place that might not get other people involved…”

“ _Might_ not?”

“Don’t worry,” he said, looking sideways at her again. “Not gonna make you take any risks. I’ll make sure it’s safe.”

“Okay,” she said, holding his eyes a moment, before looking back to the map. She scanned the suburbs of New York City, quickly finding White Plains to the northeast. “Got it,” she said.

“Find us a route,” he said. “No interstates. No tolls.”

“Um, where are we right now? I don’t even know.”

He glanced over, turning his head back and forth, keeping an eye on the road while he scanned the map she held up for him. Finally he tapped the spot with his flesh finger. “Here.”

“Oh, wow,” she said. “We _were_ close to the border.” She put her finger back on White Plains, and started to trace a line back to their current location. “Wish I had my reading glasses,” she said.

“You wear glasses?” he asked.

“Just for close-up stuff,” she said. “Computer, books. The eye doc told me she’s seeing it with younger and younger people all the time, like it’s getting worse with all the screens people stare at all day now. I guess we’re all just going to hell.”

“I bet you look real cute in ‘em,” he said, grinning as he stared at the road.

“You’d be the first to think so,” she scoffed, “and that includes me. Mostly they’re just a pain in the ass. Like right now, when I need them and don’t have them.”

“Once you figure out a way,” he said, “mark it for me with that pen, so I know where to go, if you fall asleep. Make sure it doesn’t take us back through the woods we came from, yesterday.”

“Jesus Christ, was that only yesterday?” she said, looking sightlessly at the windshield, which was fogging up a little in the rainy weather. “Seems like forever ago.”

She found a route, tracing northward from their destination, that roughly followed the state’s eastern border with Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont, before veering northwest where the southern wide reaches of Lake Champlain neared Lake George to the west. From there, state highways wove through woods and wilderness and ended finally at the little town they were currently driving through.

“Okay,” she said. “This is easy: you’re gonna go south— turn right— at, um… looks like highway four-twenty. That’ll take us out of town and….” She paused, using the map’s scale to estimate a time. “We’ll stay on that for at least half an hour.”

She looked up and mused, “God, you really start to take things for granted when you have electronics. If I had my phone, we could program in our route, make reservations at a motel, find food, Google my cracked ribs…” As an afterthought she said, softly, “Call Jane and let her know I’m not dead…”

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking over. “I woulda got you a burner phone at the store, but it’s too dangerous to make contact that way. We don’t know who’s been compromised. Someone could be watching your friend, accessing her phone, and she wouldn’t even know. It’s as much for her safety as ours…”

“I know,” she said. “I get it. I just wish… I mean it’s not just about checking in. I need to know what happened. Steve… he was— I think he was gonna put the plane down, right before I—” She cut herself off, hating the way her body seemed to physically re-experience the feeling of falling every time she thought about it.

“We’ll figure it out,” he said, looking over at her with concern, and he took his flesh hand off the wheel to rest it on her thigh for a moment, while she shuddered in a shaky, shallow breath. He slid his hand toward her knee and back and then returned it to the wheel. “If this house works out— if it’s really there, and usable— we’ll have a chance to slow down for a little, try to make contact. There’s things I can do. I just wanna make sure we’re safe, first.”

She put the map back down in her lap and stared out the window to her right. The rain was still steady, and the sun was already getting lower, behind the clouds. She felt tired, knowing a bed was a long way off, and even then, not a sure thing. She was actually pretty pessimistic about there being an empty safe-house, conveniently within a day’s drive, but it wasn’t like she had any awesome ideas herself.

They were coming up on the McDonald’s, and they both saw the signs for NY 420, turning south. She almost suggested another run through the drive-thru, maybe just for some coffee and something warm to nibble on, but he seemed to want to put distance between them and the town as soon as possible.

He turned right at the intersection, taking them past a few more businesses and then over a bridge crossing a narrow river. Beyond that, they drove past clusters of aging single-family homes, their driveways populated by older-model sedans and work trucks, and finally, as the residential area thinned out, some light industrial sites with farm equipment, warehouses, a U-Haul rental, and a busy-looking roadhouse with trucks and motorcycles parked outside.

Near the outskirts of the town, Bucky pulled into a crumbling but functional gas station, and got out to fill the tank of the 4Runner, his metal side hidden under the shirt and gloves. He jogged over to the mini-mart first, to pre-pay with cash, and soon appeared back at the truck holding two large covered to-go cups of steaming hot coffee. He braced one cup against his chest while he opened the door on his side, and handed the cups one-by-one to Darcy, who carefully set them into the cup holders and gave him a look of pure adoration. He also gave her a couple of nutritional bars, which were less exciting, but she was still grateful for them.

He finished pumping the gas and got back in, taking a moment to look at the route she’d outlined on the map, his hair dripping onto the paper. The rain was coming down hard again, and he turned the wipers up high once he started up the truck.

“When are we gonna change the plates?” she asked.

“Waiting ’til it’s dark out,” he said. “I’ll pull over somewhere.”

Once they got back on the road, he reached over and pulled his coffee out of the cup holder, and slurped a sip through the little hole in the lid. “Well,” he said, “that’s some really horrible coffee.” He tightened his face like he’d just taken a shot of tequila. “Almost as bad as the Army.”

“Blasphemy,” she said, picking up her own cup. “There is no bad coffee.” She took a sip and tried not to make a face herself.

He chuckled, looking at her with affection. “Told ya so.”

“It’s still good,” she said, wanting to believe it. “This is the first coffee I’ve had since…” She trailed off, still not wanting to think too much about _before_. She was keeping all of that carefully tucked away, in some far corner of her mind. “Anyway, beggars can’t be choosers.”

They drove on in silence for another fifteen minutes, and then she checked the map again and said, “Okay, I think you gotta do a little jigger-jogger here in this town coming up. Turn right when we get to town, and then get back on four-twenty.”

“Okay,” he said, slowing to the posted speed as they approached the little town. It was far smaller than the city they’d come from, and they were through the entire thing in a matter of five minutes.

“Can you imagine living in a place like that?” she asked, as they left the town behind, and the road gave way to countryside again. “Everyone would know who you were, even if you didn’t talk to anyone. And if you didn’t talk to people, you’d stand out for _that_ , and have, like, a nickname— like, ‘Hermit Bob’, or whatever.”

“Couldn’t do it,” he said. “I mean…” He hesitated then, but after a moment continued on with his thought. “I think it was sorta like that, when I was a kid. The feelin’ I get, from what I can remember… everyone knew everyone, was in everyone else’s business. It was just normal. No one thought nothin’ of it.” He pressed his lips together, thinking. “Couldn’t do it, now.”

“So what would you want?” she asked. “Busy place, like Manhattan? Like, so many people that you’re just one of the teeming mass? Anonymous in the crowd?”

He was shaking his head. “Nah. Crowds make me nervous. I, uh… I sorta go into combat mode. Scanning. Assessing. It’s not a great feeling. It’s part of why I called Steve. I was gettin’ to where I wasn’t trustin’ my own instincts anymore… needed a… a break, I guess. Needed a better solution, somethin’ more long-term.”

“I can imagine,” she said, though she really couldn’t, had no idea what it would be like. But it sounded crappy. Exhausting.

“So what would you want, then?” she repeated. “If you could have anything.”

“Don’t know,” he said. “Haven’t given it much thought. I guess I figured… when Steve brought me in…. he was kinda callin’ the shots, making the decisions. I was just along for the ride.” 

“Not anymore,” she said. “I mean, I know this is crazy, where we’re at now, but I do think we have choices, once we… I mean, if we can go back.” After a moment she said, “At least I want to believe that we do.” She realized she’d kept saying ‘ _we_ ’, and hoped it hadn’t freaked him out. She looked over at him, at his face staring straight ahead at the road, unreadable. “I think our friends would help … help you with whatever choice you wanted to make.”

“Maybe,” he said. And then again, more softly: “Maybe.”

<<>>

The coffee was truly so bad that she barely sipped at it, and once the sun had fully set and they were driving once again through a hypnotic tunnel of tall trees, she found herself fighting sleep. She’d succumbed at some point, because she suddenly jerked awake to find that they’d pulled to the side of the road onto some kind of turnout.

The car was running, but the headlights were off, and the seat next to her was empty. It was no longer raining, and it was pitch black outside. She could just barely feel some kind of push-pull against the front of the vehicle— Bucky was probably switching the license plates.

The subtle movement stopped, and she saw the lights of a lone car coming up on the highway from behind. She turned her head so that she was facing away from the road, and held her breath as the car went past, and then she watched the red taillights disappear around a curve in the distance. A moment later, she saw the shadow of a man go by the side of the truck, and then there was a little jiggle now and then as he fixed the rear plate. It only took a few minutes, and then he got back in, tossing the original plates into the footwell behind Darcy’s seat.

She yawned, wincing from the tug of pain it caused, and said, sleepily, “Where are we? How long did I sleep?”

“Not too long,” he said, turning the headlights back on and easing onto the highway. “Maybe an hour and a half. We’re goin’ through some wilderness area; saw signs for camping and stuff.”

“Maybe we could rent a spot at a campsite,” she said.

“Can’t,” he said, simply. “Need ID for that.”

“God, that’s right,” she said. “I keep forgetting we don’t have anything like that.” She yawned again, a big one, and it hurt too much to hide it. “ _Ow_. Goddammit.” She adjusted herself stiffly in her seat. Her ribs were aching and she couldn’t get comfortable.

He looked over at her, eyebrows worried. “Should we stop? There’s a little town comin’ up, I think…”

“No, no,” she said. “If I can get back to sleep I’ll be okay. Keep going. Let’s just… let’s get to where you wanted to go.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Think I need to take some more of the real medicine, though.”

He frowned and pulled to the side of the road again, though there was barely any shoulder, and put it in park, so that he could lean down and find the pills for her, and a bottle of water.

“How many you want?”

She couldn’t stop yawning. “Two,” she said, when she could speak again, her eyes watering from the pain.

He shook out the pills and handed them over, and then uncapped the water for her and passed that over too. She took a small drink and handed it back, and then tried to find a better position, shifting her butt as she clutched the little yellow pillow.

He recapped the water and put it into the cup-holder in his door, and then got back on the road. He looked over at her again, his brow furrowed. “I’m sorry, doll. Wish I could make it better for you.”

“S’okay,” she said sleepily. After a moment she mumbled, “You do make it better.” After a while, she drifted back into sleep.

<<>>

She woke up again briefly, a little while later, and they were in an unlit lot, behind a small commercial building. Bucky was quietly putting the large contractor’s bag of their motel trash into a rusty green dumpster, holding the lid open with his metal hand, and then just as quietly eased the lid back down and returned to the truck. He drove slowly, rolling to exit the dark lot. They were in the business district of another tiny town. No other cars were moving on the street, and the city seemed deserted.

“This place is creepy,” she slurred, not fully awake, and he looked over, surprised to see her eyes open.

“Creepy’s good,” he said. “Nobody around to see us.”

She shifted, trying to get comfortable, and mumbled, “Wish we were in bed. Wanna snuggle.”

“Me too, sweetheart.” He stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers and then returned his hand to the wheel. “Try to go back to sleep.”

<<>>

When she next woke, something seemed different; she sensed that a lot more time had passed, and everything felt very still. They were parked on a dark residential street under the cover of a large pine tree. There were no street lights, and she could hear the faint sound of crickets chirping even through the sealed-up windows of the truck. Bucky was slumped in his seat, head lolling forward, breathing the slow and somewhat labored sounds of sleep. A half-eaten protein bar was held loosely in his right hand.

She reached out to take the bar out of his hand, and as soon as she touched it, he pulled awake, sucking in a breath and lifting his head. He blinked rapidly and looked at her, seeming to take a moment to make sense of where he was.

“Sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

“Fallin’ asleep. Didn’t mean to do that. Just wanted to stop, get my bearings, try to remember… We’re real close.”

She sat up more then, a tickle of unease in her chest. “The Hydra house is around here?”

Though she couldn’t see much in the dark, she could tell by the quality of the road, the perfectly-painted curb, the purple-flowering shrub under the mailbox of the house nearest to them, that they were in a regular residential neighborhood, a place where grandmothers and families with children might live. A driveway behind them to the left had a portable basketball hoop in it. It didn’t seem right.

“It’s close,” he insisted, shutting his eyes. “Just need to remember. There’s a private road…. black mailbox with a… with another box, underneath… for newspapers.”

“Okay,” she said. “Do you want to drive around more? See if anything else looks familiar? Or, I could drive, while you look?”

“I’ll drive,” he said, taking the keys out of his lap where he’d dropped them. “We’re close,” he said again. “I remember this street. Took me a while; had to find the train station first and go from there, retrace my steps from the memories.”

“You came in on a train before?”

“No,” he said, frowning. “I think—” He stopped a moment, considering, and then said, “I think I went to the station after. Or in between. Something. But I remember the way from the station… not everything’s the same, though…”

“What were you even here for?” she asked. “Do you remember?”

His head jerked a little to the side, and it was weird, and he looked back at her, and she couldn’t see his face well in the dark, but he looked confused, his mouth open to speak, but nothing came out, and then he just shook his head and said, “I think I’m really tired.”

He stuck the keys in the ignition and started up the truck, the headlights coming on like a lightning bolt in the dark, burning an image into her eyes that she could see when she blinked, and he quickly moved to turn them off. He rolled down his window, letting the cooler night air into the truck, and a louder sound of crickets. Darcy looked at the clock: it was after two in the morning.

“Wow; I slept a lot,” she said. “You sure you don’t want me to drive? You can eat the rest of your bar and relax, try to remember.”

“No,” he said, staring forward as the truck crawled slowly down the road in the dark. “We’re real close. Can’t believe I fell asleep like that. Don’t even remember parking the car. I think….”

He seemed to be in a bit of a daze. It was no wonder; he’d barely gotten any sleep since they’d fallen from the sky. She wondered how true it was that he only slept a couple of hours at a time, and how long he’d been sleeping in the car before she woke him up.

They came to a T-intersection at the end of the block, and when they looked left, there was a yellow, diamond-shaped _No Outlet_ sign posted in that direction.

“This way,” he said, slowly turning left. They passed a couple of dark roads that cut away, leading into thick trees, both broadleaf and pine, and then he stopped the car, foot on the brake. On the right-hand side of the road, fifty feet ahead, was a black mailbox with a blue plastic newspaper holder attached to the same post.

“You okay?” she asked. When he didn’t respond, she said, “Bucky?”

He blinked a couple times and looked over at her. “Wait here,” he said, pulling over and putting the truck into park. He made sure the overhead light was set to _off_ so that it wouldn’t come on when he opened the door, and then he got out and went to the trunk, rustled through the Walmart bags. She heard the rip of some plastic packaging being pulled apart, and then he shut the trunk. He reappeared at the door, holding a vicious-looking hunting knife in a reverse grip, so that the blade was pointing down and to the rear. He crouched down to talk to her through the open driver’s-side window.

“If I’m not back in ten minutes,” he said, and then repeated it. “Ten. You start up the car, get out of here. Go somewhere public. Big twenty-four-hour store, something like that. Keep driving ’til you find something. Find a phone, or borrow one. Call Stark. Do you know how to reach him? Do you have a contact number?” He reached into the truck to turn the keys backward in the ignition, cutting the engine, and then pulled them out and handed them to her.

She shook her head to say ‘no’, feeling scared, even as she accepted the keys. She didn’t like this. Didn’t want him to go, do whatever it was he was going to do.

“Then you call your friend Jane. Don’t tell her where you are; you can’t be sure about her phone. Get a number for Stark from her. Don’t tell anyone but Stark where you are. You can trust him.”

“Don’t go,” she said. “It’s not safe.”

He was shaking his head. “It’s probably fine. Just being careful. If there’s anyone there, I’ll come right back.”

“Bucky, no— let’s just go somewhere else. We’ll go to one more motel; we’ve got enough for a few more nights, right? I don’t like this. I really don’t like this.” Her heart was pounding and she was starting to panic a little. He was taking the long-sleeved shirt off, and he rolled the shoulder on his metal side.

“It’ll be fine,” he said. “It’s just stupid, not to have a backup plan.”

“If you’re so sure it’s fine, why do you have that super-scary knife all ready to go?”

“Like I said… stupid not to.” He pushed up, away from the window, and she couldn’t see his face anymore, only the back of him as he walked slowly but purposefully toward the mailbox, the knife still ready in his right hand. She saw him check the mailbox, quietly, and then the newspaper box, but they were apparently empty. He looked back at her, his mouth a thin line, and used his metal hand to make the sign for ‘five’ with his fingers, two times. Then he disappeared into the trees.

She shuddered out a breath. Her entire body was vibrating a little. She wanted to have faith in him, in his judgement, but the truth was that she was scared shitless. She checked the clock: 2:17 a.m. She’d give him until 2:30.

<<>>

It was 2:32, and he hadn’t returned, and she was shaking all over, but unable to bring herself to put the keys in the ignition, to start up the truck and drive away from there as he’d told her to do, leaving him to some unknown fate.

There hadn’t been a single noise since he’d left: no shouts, no gunshots, no sound of any kind of struggle. Just the crickets, making their inexorable rhythm, as though they too were marking the seconds he’d been gone, that he was now overdue.

 _Don’t do this_ , she thought, even as she popped the door and slid carefully out of her seat and into the cool night air. She left the door open and walked on shaky legs toward the black mailbox, the adrenaline making her limbs feel like poison was flowing through them. She was floating, pushed forward by some unknown force and she couldn’t stop even if she’d tried. The mailbox was like some dread marker, and her heart was full of fear of what lay beyond, the sick feeling growing stronger with every step she took toward it.

It was in every way a typical metal mailbox— nothing scary about it, she told herself as she came up to it. The post that it sat upon was driven into the ground next to a crude road into the woods: just two parallel dirt paths left by tires, partly taken over by ground cover, as though seldom used.

While some primal part of her longed to spin around and race back to the truck, locking all the doors and hiding in a ball from her own fear, the bigger part of her, the part that needed to _know_ , continued moving forward. She looked back once down the road toward the truck— the door still open, waiting for her— and then started down the tracks.

Her legs were like jello, and the pain in her ribs was a pointless blur mixed in with everything else— the terror of the darkness, the trees all around, pressing in, the feel of the foreign ground under her feet. The crickets. All screaming, all meaningless in the rush of her head as she stared forward, moving down the path.

She came to a bend in the tracks and she followed it, unable to see what lay around the curve, and then all at once she came around, and sucked in her breath because he was there, about fifty feet away.

He was simply standing there, in the middle of the same tracks, his back to her. His hand still held the knife, and his entire body was frozen. There was nobody else around, no other sounds than the crickets.

There was before him, set back into the trees, a small home, far more rustic than she was expecting— like something that’d been built a half-century ago and never updated, never repaired, with moldering wooden steps leading to an equally dilapidated porch around the front and side. A white door stood just off center on the face of the house, which was a dirty, faded color, unidentifiable in the low light. Two windows— one large and one small— were on either side of the door, staring at her like crooked eyes. Curtains filled the dirty glass, blocking any view of the interior.

“Bucky?” she whispered. Her fear had reached fever pitch, and it was all she could do to push the word out. He didn’t move nor speak in response, and she took two more steps toward him, repeated herself. “Bucky?”

She continued to walk closer to him, her eyes fixed on his body, looking for any slight movement. It was like he’d gazed into the eyes of Medusa, turned to stone, forever frozen in that spot. Her stomach swirled with acid and she swallowed down the urge to retch.

She came up beside him, looked sideways up to his face, keeping her movements very slow, very smooth. She could see him breathing, the slight rise and fall of his chest the only thing on him that stirred. His eyes were fixed, unmoving, on some point to the side of the house, but she didn’t think he was seeing anything at all. His hand gripped the knife, and she remember how the Soldier had gripped the pistol that Wells had pressed into his hand, back in the safe room…

“Bucky.” She said it softly. And again. “Bucky.”

“This was a mistake.” He said it softly, but clearly. His body was still frozen, but now he swallowed, and closed his eyes. “I can’t be here.”

“What—” she started to say, but he said it again.

“I can’t be here. I’m—” He breathed out harder, and she saw his hand clenching and unclenching around the handle of the knife.

“Then let’s go,” she said. She wanted to grab his arm, turn him, get them out of there, but she knew that panicking would be the wrong thing to do. She forced herself to keep her movements quiet, slow.

“Is there someone in there?” she asked, keeping her voice low, dreading the answer.

“No,” he said, his voice gravelly, almost breaking. “I don’t think so. But I can’t—” He cut himself off, eyes still shut, trying to focus his breathing.

“Let’s go,” she said again. “Let’s go back to the truck.” And then, because she had to, she said, “Can I have the knife?”

He finally moved his head then, opening his eyes and looking down at the blade in his hand, as though he’d forgotten he was holding anything. He shifted the hand sideways toward her and then moved his eyes to her face, and she could read what he was telling her: _Yes. Take it._

Rather than go for the handle, she put her left hand over his fingers, squeezing them softly, letting him feel her touch, the warmth of her skin, and then ran her hand down the back of his, over his knuckles and to his wrist, and then moved her other hand to just barely touch the handle.

“Okay,” she said. “You can let go now.”

He just barely loosened his grip on the handle, and she was able to grasp it and pull it away, while her left hand replaced it, threading her fingers through his, and gave him another little squeeze. “Okay,” she said. “I’ve got it. Now we can walk to the truck.”

He was still staring, now at their linked hands, breathing without sound, and he shut his eyes again for a moment. She didn’t know what to do— whether she should tug on his hand, or use more words to encourage him to move. In the end, she did both.

“Let’s go,” she said. “It’s chilly back here.” She turned to her right, allowing the movement to tug gently on his hand where it was linked to hers, and found him coming along, almost like she was directing an animal on a lead, taking careful steps and forcing herself to go slowly.

They made their way back down the tire-track path that way, the crickets marking time with two chirps to each of their paces. They went around the bend and she could see the mailbox again. She was going to have nightmares about it— about the mailbox, and the crumbling house, its curtained windows, staring at her in the night. Something bad had happened there, and it was like the place was hanging onto the memory, decaying under the weight of it.

She feared for Bucky, for whatever he was seeing, remembering… where he’d gone in his head before she’d found him frozen there on the path. It made her sick to imagine if she’d followed his instructions, abandoned him there… It made her want to punch something, and her eyes stung.

They’d made it to the dark truck, and she walked him to the passenger side, where the door still stood open, and directed him to get in, which he did without protest, or any words at all. She shut the door, and went around to get in the driver’s side. She sat down, slid the hunting knife under the seat, and then put the keys in and started up the engine, adjusting the seat so that she could reach the pedals and see out the windshield. Bucky hadn’t moved to put on his seatbelt, and she leaned over, forcing herself not to react in any way to the pain in her chest, and buckled him up herself.

She grabbed the little pillow and slipped it under her own belt where it crossed over her chest, and looked over at him— he was staring at nothing, unmoving. She spoke with finality: “We’re leaving this place.”

She made a U-turn in the road and drove back the other direction, relieved to get away: she’d never in her life felt so much like she’d walked upon cursed land.

<<>>

He’d said they were going to White Plains, so that’s where she assumed they were, or somewhere near there— that meant they weren’t far from New York City, which meant freeways, which in turn meant lodging. She followed the roads out of the neighborhood, choosing what seemed to be larger or more significant routes at each intersection, until she got back onto a state highway, and that led to signs for the Westchester Expressway, which she entered, breaking Bucky’s rules, but hoping it wasn’t a tollway, because she didn’t think she could deal with any kind of bullshit whatsoever.

There was quite a bit of traffic, even though it was after three in the morning, and she drove carefully, while keeping an eye out for any hotel signs. She didn’t see any, but there were some blue signs indicating that ‘ _attractions_ ’ were ahead, at Exit 9, and after that, a warning that Exit 9 was the ‘ _last exit before bridge_ ’, which sounded ominous. She took Exit 9.

Bucky was still catatonic, or whatever was going on with him, and it was scaring the shit out of her. She was on a surface street now, and was seeing plenty of gas stations and strip malls and other amenities, but no sign of a hotel. The street she was on eventually came to an end, with options to loop back to the freeway or turn onto a different highway, and in frustration she pulled into the gas station to her right and parked outside the attached minimart, turning off the engine and telling Bucky, “I’ll be right back,” before exiting the truck and locking him in.

She felt slightly out of her body as she opened the door to the minimart, the bell jingling, and became aware that she was still wearing the too-large pink flip-flops, the men’s shorts, and the big black T-shirt with no bra. She knew she looked like a crazy person, but she couldn’t afford to care.

She approached the pimply-faced clerk standing behind the counter, who looked at her nervously, and she said, trying to sound as normal as possible, “Hey, I’m kind of lost— is there a Motel 6 or a Super 8 around here? I can’t remember which one I’m supposed to meet my sister at.” She was surprised by how easily the lie came.

“Uh,” the kid said, and when he didn’t have an immediate answer for her, her heart sank, but then he said, “Hang on a sec, let me check.” He pulled out a smart-phone, which she looked at enviously— access to so much, right there at his fingertips, and for a second she considered begging a phone call… if she could get a hold of Jane… but what would she even say? Jane would probably call the cops on Bucky… she needed Steve, or Sam…

The kid had opened a mapping app, and he spoke up, interrupting her thoughts. “Yeah, there’s a Motel 6 right here,” he said, turning the phone so that she could see the screen. “Is that it?”

“Oh my gosh, _yes_ ,” she said, overplaying it a little, as she took note of the cross street. It was off the same road she’d just been on, but in the opposite direction, just past the junction with the interstate. “Thank you so much,” she said. “Seriously, you just saved my life.”

She got the hell out of there before he could start to really notice how fucked-up looking she was, and hurried back to the truck, her ribs killing her. “We’re all set,” she said to Bucky, after she buckled up, and he actually nodded a fraction of an inch, which made her eyes sting a little, in relief. Something was still working up there, at least a little bit.

She exited the gas-station lot and went back the other way on the same road, went under the multiple lanes of the interstate, and kept her eyes peeled for the correct cross-street, putting on her blinker once she found it. And Hallelujah, there it was: Motel 6, just a block away. They’d better have a fucking vacancy.

There weren’t many cars in the lot, so she needn’t have worried. She parked out of sight of the doors to the office, and once again told him, “Be right back,” before locking him in.

The office, which was a brick rectangle with bright red awnings and a single glass door set between large glass windows, looked more like a Dairy Queen than the front desk for a motel. It even had a glass-enclosed service window that made her feel like she should be ordering something for take-out. There was a vending machine to the left, and a short counter with a pot of coffee sitting on a hot plate next to a microwave.

The hotel clerk was a stout older woman with tidy dark hair; she had beautiful olive skin and meticulously applied makeup that made Darcy feel like a swamp beast in her sorry state. The woman was completely professional and courteous, as if there were nothing at all alarming about Darcy’s appearance, her middle-of-the-night need for a room, her request to pay cash, or her explanation that she didn’t know her license-plate number because it was her boyfriend’s car.

“Can I write it down later and give it to you?” she asked. Then she rushed on to say, “My apartment lost power— that’s why I look like crap.” Boy, the lies were just flowing now. She remembered Bucky’s advice not to overplay it, and clamped down on her urge to explain more, but then her stomach sank when she heard the clerk say, “That’s not a problem. I just need to see some ID and then you’ll be all set.”

She felt her eyes well up with tears. “I, um… I’m sorry; I don’t have it. Oh my gosh, I don’t even have my purse. I just— we weren’t even thinking; we just left in the dark. My boyfriend— I think he has his wallet, but he’s asleep. Should I go get it?” She said the last part as a gamble; if the clerk said ‘yes’ she’d just have to get back in the truck and leave.

The clerk was watching her, sympathetic, and finally said, “It’s fine; just give me your name and address so I can put that into our system. You said you’re paying cash?”

“Yes,” she said, quickly pulling the cash out of her pocket and setting it in front of the service window, so the clerk could see that it was real. Her mind was racing, trying to figure out what false information to give her. She shouldn’t have tried this; she wasn’t any good at it.

“Okay, um— you ready?” she asked and the clerk nodded, fingers poised over her computer keyboard. “Okay. It’s, uh, Daisy. Daisy Barton.” She spelled the two names for the clerk, trying to sound calm, helpful.

“Got it,” said the clerk, smiling and looking up. “And your address?”

“Right,” said Darcy, feeling like the world’s worst liar. “It’s, uh… three twenty-four…. Archer Avenue… yeah, like the bow-and-arrow archer,” she said when the clerk looked up, and finished with, “Apartment number nine.”

“City?” said the clerk, looking up again.

“Uh, White Plains.”

“Zip?”

“One-oh-six-oh-one,” Darcy said, reading the number off the address on a Pizza Hut ad in a little display rack next to the window. She felt like she was being screened for drug smuggling by airport security or something, and braced herself for the moment when she would be found out, the clerk picking up the phone to call the police…

None of that happened, though; the clerk simply tapped a few more keys on her keyboard and then smiled and said, “Okay, you should be all set; that’ll be ninety-five dollars.” When Darcy looked surprised, the clerk gave her an apologetic smile and said, “I’m sorry, but I have to charge you full price for the night even though it’s almost four AM.” She’d mistaken Darcy’s surprise at successfully renting the room, for some kind of shock over the rate.

“I understand,” said Darcy, recovering, and handed over a hundred dollars in cash. “It’s worth it, to have electricity.”

The clerk counted out her change, and then slipped a key card into a thick paper sleeve, and wrote a room number on it with ballpoint pen. She slid it over to Darcy and said, “Check out is twelve o’clock.”

She felt the urge to turn and run from the office immediately, before the clerk could change her mind, but she paused and said, “If it turns out my power’s still out tomorrow, can I extend my stay?” She was pleased by how natural it sounded.

“Yes, miss,” said the clerk. “Just call or come to the office before ten tomorrow morning, so that we can hold the room for you.”

“Excellent,” said Darcy. “Have a great night.”

“Thank you,” said the woman, giving her what seemed like a genuine smile. “I hope you rest well. I’m sorry your power went out.”

Darcy felt like a dick now, for lying about the outage, but oh well. She hurried out of the office before she could blow it by saying something stupid. She felt like she’d been gone too long, and hoped Bucky hadn’t been worried, or freaked out, wondering where she’d been.

She got into the truck and handed him the key card in its little sleeve. His eyes were shut, but he opened them when he felt it touching his hand, and accepted it, looking down at it like it was an artifact from an alien planet.

“Got us a room,” she said. “You’ll be lying down in a comfy bed in no time.” She started up the truck, and slowly drove down the lot, peering at the numbers on the dark blue doors. “Here we are,” she said, parking in front of their room. “I’m gonna get you in there and settled, and then I’m gonna bring in some of our bags, okay?”

He didn’t answer her, but she continued as though he had. “All right. Let’s get you inside.” She exited her side, shut the door, and went around to open Bucky’s door. She stood there a moment with his door open, debating what to do. She knew there was no way she could get him out of the truck under her own power, and he wasn’t making any move to exit by himself.

He’d always been so attentive and concerned about her pain; she decided to use that to her advantage: “Hey Bucky,” she said. “I’m gonna need you to get out of the car, okay? If I try to lift you my ribs are gonna poke into my lungs, and then we’ll both be up shit creek without a paddle.”

He blinked a couple of times and then turned his head, noticed the open door finally. About thirty seconds later, he started to move, slowly pushing his tall body out of the truck.

“Okay,” she said, relieved, shutting the door once he was fully out. She took his right hand in hers, and led him as she slowly moved toward the door. She released his hand to fit the key-card into the slot on the door, waited for the little light to turn green, and then pushed it open.

The room was very small, but it had a king-size bed with three huge pillows, and it was far cleaner than the room back at Joe’s Motel. There was no proper dresser at all, but rather a little open-shelved unit against the wall opposite the bed, beneath a flat-screen TV mounted high up on the wall. Each side of the bed had its own bedside table and lamp; a standard hotel-style telephone sat on one of the little tables, a clock-radio on the other. A small writing desk with a chair was in the leftover space near the window. A door beyond the bed apparently led to a small bathroom.

She shut the door and led him to the side of the mattress, gently tugging on his hand to encourage him to sit down, which he finally did. She dropped the key-card on the little desk and then knelt down and untied his shoes, removed them one by one, and lined them up against the wall next to the bedside table.

She didn’t know whether to undress him, or leave him be. He apparently liked to sleep without clothing on, but undressing him in his shut-down state felt invasive and wrong, so she left his pants and shirt on. She pulled down the covers, and encouraged him to lie back, lifting his legs onto the mattress and helping him unbend them so that she could lift the bedding back over him and tuck him in. He rolled to his side, facing the door, his eyes open, unseeing.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, for the third time in an hour, and leaned down to give him a kiss on the forehead. She almost burst into tears then, because he didn’t respond at all, even to that.

“Okay,” she whispered, mostly for herself, trying to keep steady, and grabbed the key-card again. She knew she’d want the stuff from the truck when they woke up, and now was the time to do it, before the sun came up and people were about.

It took her ten minutes to bring it all in, one bag at a time, moving slowly, each one a struggle, the pain awful. The duffel bag was the worst: heavy, awkward, and almost dragging on the ground. It was a far cry from her days of grocery shopping for Jane in New Mexico, when she’d challenge herself to bring in as many bags as possible in a single trip.

When the last bag was in, she dumped it on the carpet in relief, flipped the deadbolt over, and put the chain on the door. She kicked off the pink flip-flops and looked over at Bucky: he was in the same position, eyes closed, and he was breathing lightly, his lips parted. At least he seemed more peaceful now.

She winced as she crouched down and unzipped the duffel bag, and rummaged around inside until she found the Vicodin bottle. She took two of the three remaining pills and swallowed them dry right away, grimacing to get them down her throat, and then pushed back up and made her way to the bathroom.

Compared to Joe’s, the Motel 6 bathroom seemed luxurious: it had a full countertop with a huge mirror covering the wall behind it; complimentary shampoo, conditioner and body lotion; plenty of extra towels and washcloths; and an overall feeling of sterility that’d been lacking at the other place. She longed to take a bath, wash her hair, change clothes… but none of that mattered at the moment, and she was in too much pain to do any of that anyway. She just wanted to climb into bed with Bucky and hold him.

She quickly used the toilet and washed her hands. There were two glass tumblers on the counter, but she ignored them, making a cup with her hand to quickly drink a few mouthfuls of water. She knew there was toothpaste in one of the Walmart bags, but she didn’t have the will to go back and forth again, crouch down, search for it— she was already near collapse from exhaustion and worry and pain.

She left the bathroom and went to the empty side of the bed, pulled back the covers to crawl in, and then leaned over— the final insult to her ribs— to set the alarm on the clock-radio, double-checking to make sure she’d set it for 9 a.m., not 9 p.m.

Finally, she lay back, exhaling in relief, and then rolled carefully to her side, facing Bucky’s back. She inched herself over until she was spooned up against his body as much as she could without pressing on his back, her legs bumped up into his, her face just behind his shoulder blades. She threaded her arm over his waist to rest against his stomach, the best she could do for an embrace with the pitiful state of their bodies— they were like two broken dolls, awkwardly posed in some kind of make-believe of a couple in bed.

Just before she drifted away, she felt his flesh hand slowly move up to cover hers where it lay against him, and then he pulled both of their hands up his body until they were resting together against his chest, pinning her arm in its curve around him— holding her there, like a grateful captive, and she fell asleep to the beat of his heart: steadfast, tangible and true.


	17. Chapter 17

She woke up, flat on her back, heart pounding. The room was dark, and Bucky was still next to her, on his side, but they’d disentangled their hands from one another in their sleep. She reached out to touch the back of his shirt, and then recoiled with a jerk when he abruptly shouted, some unknown word, more of a sound than speech. He was having a nightmare.

She rolled onto her side, ignoring the pain, and reached out again, hesitant, until her hand touched his right shoulder, and then let it sink a little more into him, increasing the pressure just a bit. “Bucky,” she said, just above a whisper.

He didn’t wake or respond, instead making another sound, this one more passive, pained, like a child afraid to go into a dark room, and rolled onto his back, which made her wince, imagining his weight pressing his wounds into the bed. His eyes were shut, and she could see them moving rapidly underneath the soft skin of his eyelids. His lips were parted and his face was sweaty, and he was breathing in irregular gasps.

Another shout burst from him, sharp and loud, and she worried about alarming any neighbors on the other side of the motel wall. Hopefully, if there was anyone there to hear the shouts and gasps and whimpers, they would just think they were overhearing sex, and mind their own business.

She wanted to rescue him from whatever phantom was torturing him in his dream, and she touched him again, this time sliding down to his hand, clasping it. “Bucky,” she said, louder this time. “Bucky, wake up.” She squeezed his hand again, shaking it a little. “Bucky,” she said again, more urgently.

His eyes popped open suddenly, staring straight up at the ceiling, and he gasped for air, and then took several deep breaths, his chest rising and falling. He blinked a few times and spoke in a raspy voice, not looking at her.

“What happened.” And then, “Where are we?”

“We’re safe,” she said immediately, pressing his hand with hers again, to punctuate the statement. “We’re— I drove us to a motel. You were— you sort of shut down, so I got us somewhere safe. Are— is it okay to be lying on your back?”

“What?” he asked, blinking a few more times, and then finally looked over at her, and something uncoiled inside when she saw his eyes— the real Bucky, _her_ Bucky— clearly there. Confused, but there. “What happened?” he asked again. He let go of her hand so that he could roll onto his right side, facing her in the bed. His metal hand came up to scrub across his face, rubbing at the scruff that was getting thicker each day.

His bangs kept falling into his face, and she reached out and swept them aside, trying to tuck them behind his ear as she’d seen him do. She didn’t know how to answer his question; she wasn’t really sure herself, what had happened back at that house. She’d moved her fingers down to his jaw, feeling the thick stubble, and he put his metal hand on top of hers, guiding her hand over to his lips. She could feel his warm breath on her fingertips as he shut his eyes, lost in thought.

“The house,” he said at last.

“Yeah,” she replied, softly. “You, um— you had some kind of… reaction. I— I don’t think— it wasn’t like the Soldier. It was something else.” The metal of his hand was cool, and he was being very careful with it, holding her fingers as though they were made of paper, like they could be crushed with the slightest pressure.

“You came and got me,” he said, opening his eyes to look at her. It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah,” she said. “Are you mad? I sort of, um… totally didn’t do what you told me to.”

He didn’t answer her, just continued to run her fingers across his mouth, and she could feel the contrast between the prickle of his beard and the softness of his lips, and she wanted to kiss him, pull her hand away and replace her fingers with her mouth.

“I couldn’t do it,” she said, when he didn’t answer her. “I couldn’t just leave. I mean— I didn’t hear anything; there wasn’t anything bad happening, that I could see or hear…”

“Shouldn’t have taken the risk,” he said, dropping his hand.

“Don’t say that,” she said. “Would you just leave me? If you thought I was in trouble, if you didn’t know what was happening?”

He was silent a moment, and then he said, softly, “No. Course not.”

“So don’t ask me to either.”

She could tell he wanted to say something, to argue with her, explain how it was different, but she cut him off before he could start, saying, “What did Steve promise you? Before you came to the compound in the woods. Back at— back in the room, when—” She stopped, couldn’t say it all, didn’t want to relive it even through words, and she clumsily talked around it. “I heard you say to him— you were mad about it… that he’d promised you.”

He took a moment before he answered, and when he did, he wouldn’t look at her. “Before I’d come in, before I agreed to go anywhere… I made him promise he’d stop me. If he had to.”

“I got that part,” she asked. “But— were there specifics?”

“No,” said Bucky. “But he knew what I meant. Or I thought he did. I guess I was wrong.”

“He couldn’t,” she said. “Like I couldn’t… I couldn’t just leave you there.”

“I thought he knew,” he said, and his voice was restraining some kind of emotion. “He had to have known… what I meant. How important it was.”

“He loves you too.” As soon as she’d said it, she realized how much that one small word— ‘ _too_ ’— had also said, and wondered if he’d noticed it.

“I needed to know he could,” he said. “I needed to know that I was safe— that they couldn’t…”

“Thank God he didn’t,” she whispered, and a tear snuck out, slid down her face, hating that for him, death was synonymous with _safe_. “Bucky, I’m so glad he broke his promise.”

He looked up at her then, and reached a metal finger out, stopped the roll of the tear with it, drying his way up her cheek with the finger, so carefully, and then pivoted to his thumb, traced the line of her cheekbone with it.

“I can’t ever go back to that,” he said, just watching his thumb move against her skin. “I can’t. Even if it’s a gamble… I’d rather die than take that chance.”

“I know,” she said, more tears leaking out. “But I can’t be a part of that. I can’t … I wouldn’t just leave you, knowing there’s a chance…”

He shuddered in a breath and brought her hand back up to his lips again, kissed her fingertips. “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry for askin’ you to. I just wanted you to be safe.”

“We’re safe now,” she said. “I think.” And then she sighed and made a scoffing sound. “I gave the front-desk lady here the worst lie of all time, but I think she bought it. Either that or she didn’t care. Probably just didn’t care.”

He’d moved his lips down to her palm and was placing soft kisses all over it, pausing to respond to her. “Most people don’t. S’long as you’re payin’ them. Not doin’ anything obvious that’ll get ‘em into trouble along with you.”

The feel of his mouth, his breath on the delicate skin of her palm, was stirring her inside, making her move in closer, and she pushed her knee between his legs so that she could press more of herself against him, and even with clothes on, the heat of it—his body so near, their legs twining together— sent a trail of electricity up her thighs.

She pulled her hand away from his mouth so that she could angle her face in, moving her lips up to barely feather his, like a question, asking permission, needing to be sure what he wanted… she could feel his breath and the prickle of his beard against her mouth, and she shut her eyes, sinking into the pleasure of the in-between, all of her senses firing… 

He stayed there a moment, just breathing with her, and then he answered, with a tentative closing of his lips around hers, soft… vulnerable…

They stayed like that, speaking to each other with the gentle press of their lips, their air mingling, building a sweet tension in the heat between their faces, and she was making little sounds that would have embarrassed her if she hadn’t felt so raw…

And then it intensified, becoming all at once a little desperate, their lips pulling it from each other, his metal arm coming around, trying to reel her in closer, running down her back to the swell of her hip, and she moaned, wanting him, trying to chase some need she couldn’t fill quickly enough, wanting to tell him… show him…

But it was hurting her, the twisting and breathing, and he could feel it, could tell she was fighting against the pain, and he pulled back, slowing down, leaving her lips to press and taste the other planes and curves of her face, his metal hand holding her head gently, and then he pulled back completely, breaking them apart, his serious blue eyes speaking to her for a moment before he sank back further, rolling onto his back.

She followed, tucking herself into his side, sighing as she rested her head on his right shoulder, and his flesh arm wrapped around her, holding her carefully to his body.

“I’m sorry my ribs are such a cock-block,” she said, not even joking, angry with the situation, and it took him a minute, but then he started laughing, quietly, his eyes shut, and when she tipped her face up to look at him, he was so beautiful—seeing him smile again— that it almost hurt…

“I never heard that particular term before,” he said, when he’d stopped laughing, “but I think I figured out what it means.” His flesh hand was moving up and down her shoulder in a soothing motion. He didn’t say anything after that, and she couldn’t interpret the silence— if he was frustrated, like her, or if he was glad they were being forced to take things slow… 

They lay there a few minutes, just breathing together, and then she said, “Doesn’t it hurt your back? Lying flat?”

He stared at the ceiling, thinking a moment before he replied. “Not like before,” he said. “Must be sealin’ up. I should clean up, change the wrap.”

“Do you want to take a shower? I still don’t know how you’re not having to pee… I guess not drinking that horrible coffee must’ve saved you.”

Bucky chuckled again, his eyes crinkling up. “God, that coffee…”

Now that she’d brought it up, she realized that in fact _her_ bladder was knocking on the door again, so she said, “Well, I’m gonna go, even if you’re not,” and rolled herself away from him and then eased herself out of the bed, stopping at the pile of bags to dig out their new toothbrushes and toothpaste.

When she was alone the bathroom, she thought about how they hadn’t really discussed what had happened to him back at the Hydra house, or whatever that place was, but she didn’t feel like she should press him on it. He seemed okay now, in any case.

She just wished she had a better idea of what to do for him, in a situation like that, when he was shut down. It sounded similar to what Steve had described happening at the Tower, when he’d remembered about Tony’s parents. Maybe that had happened again— remembering something horrible, something he’d done…

She looked over at the little bottles of shampoo and conditioner as she was brushing her teeth. She couldn’t wait to take a shower… put on some fresh clothes… but she wanted to let Bucky go first, after all the stress he’d gone through.

“I’m done in there for now, if you want to clean up,” she said, as she went back into the main room. He’d gotten out of bed, and was digging through the Walmart bags, pulling out a plastic pack of men’s boxer briefs. He ripped open the package and pulled out a charcoal-colored pair, furrowing his brow as he removed the plastic piece of tape that had held it into a rolled-up shape inside the packaging.

“I don’t understand why everything in the future has to be tied together, taped down, covered in plastic… labels slapped on that you gotta peel off,” he said. “None of it’s necessary. Just seems like a waste. A way to make everything more frustrating.”

She thought it was funny how he’d called it the ‘future’— what was really the present, for both of them. It was too easy to forget that in some sense, he was a time-traveler, like Steve.

He pushed himself up, the clean underpants in his hand, and she said, “Do you want me to help you unwrap your back?” Then, because she remembered what had happened the last time he’d declined her help, she said, “You know what? Scratch that. It’s not optional. I’m gonna help you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and he reached back over his shoulders with his hands, making to yank the shirt off over his head.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa… slow down there, cowboy,” she said, stopping him. “Like I said— let me help. We’re not in any hurry, right? For once…” Even as she said it, she realized she had no idea what time it was— only that the alarm hadn’t gone off yet, so it was before nine, at least. She turned to glance at the clock: 8:45 a.m. They’d slept a little over four hours, give or take, and she was pretty sure Bucky’d been out for all of it. Which was a good thing, even if she hated what it’d taken for him to stay under that long.

“Hang on,” she said, and she moved to turn the alarm off, so that it wouldn’t interrupt them. “We’ve got a whole hour before I need to go back to the office, renew the room for another day. We can stay another day, right?”

“How much money we got left?”

“Enough,” she said, even though she knew it was over half gone already. 

He took a minute, thinking, and then said, “Okay. Yeah. Let’s hold here for a day, recoup, figure out what’s next.”

She sighed in relief, grateful she hadn’t had to work to persuade him, though she’d been prepared to. She wouldn’t have abided packing up and leaving again so soon, and there was no way in hell she was going to let him go back to that house. “All right then,” she said. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

She helped him lift the shirt up and off, going slowly this time, under her stern eye. The tail of the plastic wrap was coming unstuck from his side, and she took it in her hands, saying, “You sure you want to undo this?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I should wash it out again.” He met her eyes and said, “Don’t worry— it ain’t gonna be like last time.” She nodded and slowly started to unwind it, stepping in a circle around his body while he held his arms up. It’d only been twenty-four hours since she’d wrapped him at the other motel— it felt like so much longer. She wondered how much he could have healed in such a short amount of time.

Unwinding was easier— she didn’t have to lift her arms as much, so it wasn’t as painful for her own body. She got the long continuous piece all the way off, and she balled it up the best she could and dropped it into the plastic wastebasket next to the little desk, where it immediately started to unball itself, expanding like a sentient being.

She returned to him and looked at the remaining piece that was lying directly over his wound. She could already see through the clear plastic that the tissue underneath looked different, but she was hesitant to tug on it, worried that something would stick and hurt him. “I’m afraid to pull on it,” she said.

“It’s okay— just start at the top and go down slowly. You ain’t gonna hurt me.”

“If you say so,” she said, biting her lip. “Here goes.” She reached for the top edge where it lay across his upper back, using her fingers to grab the corners, and hesitated again, saying, “Promise me you’ll say something if it starts to hurt, okay?”

“Get on with it already,” he said chuckling. And then, “Yes, I promise. Go on, sweetheart.”

She pressed her lips together, almost holding her breath, and started to pull down on the plastic sheet, releasing it inch by inch from his flesh. As the tissue underneath was revealed, her eyes widened and she couldn’t help voicing her surprise.

“Holy shit,” she said. “It’s, like, totally different already. Not healed, obviously, but— I mean… wow.”

She got the rest of the sheet off, and just let it fall to the floor, not wanting to leave his side for a moment, amazed and fascinated by how much his body had done in just a day.

“What’s it look like?” he asked, craning his head sideways and back, trying to see.

“Well, it’s— God, it’s amazing,” she said. “The bone isn’t showing anymore… there’s some kind of pale tissue… I don’t know what to call it… but it’s sort of filling in the empty spaces, and the muscles that were torn are starting to knit together.” She reached out, wanting to run her fingers over it, but stopped, reminding herself that it was still very much an open wound.

“Wow,” she said again, almost whispering. Then, “Sorry, I mean— maybe it’s creepy for me to be geeking out on your injury, but jeez… I just— I’ve never seen something so amazing in my life.”

He turned then, moving away from her so that he was in profile, and said, sharply, “S’not amazing.” He swiped at the bridge of his nose, a nervous gesture, and then put his hands on his hips. “It’s fucking monstrous, is what it is. I hate—” He stopped, frustrated. “I hate what they did to me. All of it.”

“But you’d be dead now, if not for—”

“Yeah,” he said. “And if I could undo it, take away everything they did to me, I would. Even if it meant dyin’. At least dyin’s natural.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, dropping her eyes. She felt like she’d misstepped again, admiring something forced upon him. But she hadn’t known him as anything but this, so to her, it was just a part of seeing him— all of him— and she thought he was incredible. But she wasn’t going to press it, because it was clear how he felt about it— that he couldn’t see himself the way she did. It wasn’t something she was just going to magically talk him out of.

“Sorry, doll,” he said, softer, noticing how her face had fallen. “Didn’t mean to snap at you. S’not your fault.” He turned back to her and ran his flesh hand up and down her arm. He was a bit gamy— sweaty and smelling like man, but it wasn’t exactly a bad thing. She was sure she had her own interesting fragrance by now. She ran her hands down his bare chest, and then moved in to give him a soft kiss right between his pecs, where he had a dusting of dark hair, and he sighed, a content sound that told her he wasn’t mad at her.

“You good to go for your shower?” she asked, pulling away. He nodded and turned, heading to the bathroom, and she called after him, “Let me know if you need anyone to run a soapy washcloth slowly over your body, okay?” It was a sort of peace offering, and he looked back and gave her a little grin, accepting it, and said, “Will do,” and then shut the door, and a moment later she heard the shower turn on.

She’d understood his strongly negative feelings about the prosthesis, even if she didn’t share them, but was surprised that his anger extended even to the healing power that the serum had granted him. She’d always been jealous of powered people, wishing she had something special or enhanced to make life easier. It hadn’t occurred to her that even the positive effects of what they’d done to him would just be another reminder of violation… and another way to make him feel like a freak.

He didn’t stay long in the shower— Darcy barely had time to rummage in the Walmart bags for a change of clothes; she was removing the tags when she heard the water turn off. He emerged from the bathroom a minute later, his long hair slicked back and dripping, looking like some kind of adonis in his steamy, moist-skinned glory, clad only in the charcoal boxer briefs that stretched across his hips and hugged every contour of his body.

She may have gulped a little as she looked up at him, and then quickly averted her eyes. They were in some kind of unusual no-man’s-land of a relationship that she’d never really experienced before: they’d crossed certain lines but not others, moving in a stuttered fashion, skipping around the typical order of things…

Even if they hadn’t been injured, she wouldn’t have felt entirely confident about giving into certain urges she was having, namely to pounce on him and rip his clothes off, marking him with her scent and claiming him as hers, like some kind of wild animal. His own responses hadn’t been completely consistent, and she wanted to be very sure she wasn’t pushing him into anything…

“You okay?” he asked. He could sense she was uncomfortable, but had no idea why, apparently unaware of the physical effect he was having on her, just by standing there all dripping and warm and practically naked.

“Yeah,” she said, fussing with the bags, and gathering her clothes before standing up. “I, uh… I’m just excited to get clean finally. Did you wash your back? You weren’t in there very long.”

“Yeah, I’m good,” he said. “Pain’s tolerable now. Probably won’t even feel it any more, in a week or two.”

“God, that’s just—” She was about to say ‘ _amazing_ ’ again, but stopped herself in time. “That’s just so fast. I’m surprised.”

“Yeah, well…” He trailed off, rubbing a towel against the the back of his head, trying to stop his hair from dripping. “Guess I’m stuck with it.”

“You know, there are some things you _can_ change,” she said. “I mean, obviously not the serum-stuff, but… if we go back? You could try working with Mr. Stark again, to design a new arm— you know, with input from you. Your choices.”

She’d moved in closer to him, keeping her eyes above the waist for her own sanity, and reached up, threaded her hand into his wet hair. Her left hand still held the bundle of clothes, keeping the space between them.

“And I could still cut your hair, if you want. I can tell it bugs you sometimes. I know you didn’t like the idea before, when I brought it up in the gym, but we didn’t even know each other then. I mean, it’s something we could try. If you wanted to.” He wasn’t saying anything, and she was worried her suggestions were offending him.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she said, pulling her fingers slowly down a thick, wet slice of bangs. “Your hair is super sexy like this.” She grinned playfully. “Maybe _too_ sexy. Gives you an unfair advantage…” He’d closed his eyes, and now a little smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“I mean, I know it’s not something they gave you,” she said. “It’s more like… something they _took_. I mean, something as basic as a haircut… most people take it for granted, and it’s like they stole that from you, this comfort-level with everyday things you deserve. Maybe it’s stupid of me, but… I dunno. I wanna do something for you, and that’s something I can do.”

She dragged her fingers down his scruff and let her hand fall away finally. “It doesn’t always have to be big deal, important things, like your arm… it can be little things too— like the peanut butter cups. A way to be like, fuck all y’all; I’m still here. I can do what I want.”

He’d opened his eyes, and he put his hand on her cheek, caressing it, sighing a little, taking the time to gather his thoughts before he spoke. “It ain’t always that easy,” he finally said. “Thinkin’ it, and feelin’ it… they’re two different things…”

His eyes were moving over her face and said, “Took me long enough… back at Stark’s place… to feel like I even deserved to put my eyes on you…” He tipped his head down and kissed her forehead, like he wanted her to know that saying something like that didn’t mean he was going to withdraw or run away.

She still laughed and said, “I think you’ve got that backwards. Like, you’re so far out of my league it’s ridiculous.”

He made a scoffing noise and said, “What?” and pulled his hand away, stepping back a bit, and she thought, _uh oh_ , but she kept talking anyway, unable to stop herself.

“I mean, it’s kind of obvious, right? You’re like, so freakin’ handsome it’s ridiculous… I mean, if we ever get back to civilization, I’m gonna have to beat the other girls off with a stick… And you’re so kind and attentive and do stuff like get me bad coffee even though we’re on the run…”

He laughed, and she was relieved to have saved the mood, but then she went and wrecked it again, with her damn mouth:

“And then there’s me,” she said. “I’m just this short little blob with no skills, nothing special going on, and sometimes I think I’m only scraping by in life because I lucked out having a genius for a friend, who’s also dating an Avenger… and anyway, it’s a man’s world, and I’ve got the tits, so—”

“Darcy,” he said, cutting her off. “What the hell are you even talking about? Are you serious right now?”

She looked down, embarrassed that she’d actually vocalized some of the insecurities that she tried to hide about herself. She knew low self-esteem was a pretty serious turnoff, both personally and professionally, and she usually tried to keep that shit locked down, project a confidence she didn’t always feel. But something about Bucky just made her want to be honest, even about the ugly parts of her workings. Let him see the real deal.

“I’m just—” She kept her eyes down, fiddled with the ball of clothes in her hands. “I dunno. I’m exaggerating, maybe. I mean, I know you know I like who I am. But then this inner asshole just comes out sometimes to smack me down, and I don’t know what a guy like you could possibly see—”

He cut her off again: “A guy like—” He pulled her carefully into his body again and muttered, “You’re out of your mind.”

He put his hands on both sides of her face then, tilting her head up so that he could see her, his eyes flicking back and forth to take in both of hers, and said, “For Christ’s sake, Darcy, you’re the most gorgeous thing I think I’ve ever seen… and you're showin' me, in so many ways, that you care about who I am now, that it don’t matter what I was before— not just the… the bad parts, but the other stuff too— the guy Steve can’t let go of… none of that even matters to you.”

He kept going: “You’re so smart— don’t you know that? And somehow in spite of all this shit we’re dealin’ with, you’re makin’ me smile and laugh, and remember things can be _good_ … that it don’t all have to be bad dreams and fightin’ and—”

He sighed and put his arms around her, and she dropped the clothes so she could move in closer, let him enfold her. “Makes me mad,” he said. “Not at you,” he clarified. “At whoever— whatever in this goddamned world made you feel that way about yourself… that you’re not good enough…” He made a scoffing sound then. “Jesus… not good enough for me?” And he repeated it again, softer this time: “Out of your mind…”

She felt a little uncomfortable, like she’d soured something that’d been sweet before, at least on the outside. That was usually a bad sign for her, even in a budding friendship— a warning that the pretending was over, and the revelation of incompatibility was right around the corner.

This thing with Bucky, though… it’d taken a different course— she hadn’t started out pretending with him, for one thing. She hadn’t consciously hidden parts of herself away, as she tended to do, and what she’d discovered had been a surprise: they could be awkward, embarrassed, and still be okay. Vulnerable, without having to run away. Upset, without needing to punish. There weren’t any off-limit emotions… at least so far.

He still had his arms wrapped around her, and she wanted to hug him back, to communicate her feelings, but stopped herself before she accidentally touched his wound. “Your back,” she said. “Don’t we need to wrap it again?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Probably should. Couple more days.”

“So…,” she said, “Do you want to do that now? The plastic, I mean? Or after I shower?”

“It can wait,” he said. “Air it out a bit; let it dry. You want help in the shower?” He bent down and picked up her clothes for her.

“Not sure yet,” she said, taking the bundle back from him. “I don’t know if I can stand up that long… the steam is gonna make me woozy. Might just wash my hair and then sit down to wash the rest of me.”

“You gonna be able to wash your hair?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “Liftin’ your arms like that’s gonna be rough.”

“I know,” she said. “But I can’t stand it any more. When you have this much hair, having it dirty is just…” She made a disgusted sound. “I feel like I’m wrapped in a layer of scum.”

He chuckled and brushed his thumb across the top of her cheekbone again. “If it’s any consolation— you don’t look it.” He moved his hand to her hair. “Don’t feel like it, either.”

“You’re gonna score major points with that kind of talk,” she said, “but right now I need to get soapy and clean almost as bad as I need coffee.” She frowned. “Even more than coffee. God, I can’t believe I’m saying that. You must have broken something in me, with that terrible coffee yesterday.”

He grinned, his hands still in her hair, lifting and fluffing it behind her back. “We better do something about that, then. Clean up first, and then find you some decent coffee.”

“Living the dream,” she sighed.

“Why don’t you just sit in the tub? I’ll wash your hair for you.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure. I mean, you don’t gotta strip down or nothin’, if that’s what you’re worried about… just get in there and I’ll wash your hair up, and then I’ll leave you be, so you can soak in the tub and wash up your other parts.” He grinned again, biting his lower lip, and she melted a little.

“Okay,” she said, smiling shyly. “I’m, uh… I’m just gonna go start the water and get in.”

She went into the bathroom, set her clean clothes onto the countertop next to the sink, and glanced at herself in the mirror. Well. She was glad Bucky had such a favorable opinion of her, because what she saw looking back at her was not what she’d call a high point in her life.

She noticed that he’d already moved the shampoo and soap over to the shower, but not the conditioner, so she grabbed the little bottle and then bent over to turn on the taps, keeping her movements slow.

While it was heating up, she slipped out of the dirty men’s clothing that she’d been wearing since Joe’s, leaving the underpants on. Getting the shirt off was still tricky— as before, she had to pull her elbows back in through the sleeves and then nudge the rest of the shirt up over her head, without lifting or twisting her arms too much. It still hurt a lot, but she was relieved to get it off— she felt like it should be thrown into an incinerator.

She grabbed an extra towel, figuring she could just sit in the tub and hold it against her chest while he washed her hair. She felt like she was being a little bit prudish, but she was having a hard time interpreting exactly where they were at, and what he’d be comfortable with… or if he even wanted to see her naked. And with breasts her size, there was simply no away to be subtle: it was always like an announcement, the first time: _Now presenting… my giant tits!_

She was holding the towel to her chest, and just stepping into the tub, when Bucky knocked on the open door. “You in yet?”

“Yup,” she said, “Just gettin’ in now.” She lowered herself down and sat, keeping her legs bent so that she could rest her chest against them. She hadn’t stoppered the drain yet, so the water was just running freely down and away.

Bucky came in and reached up to remove the shower head from its bracket; it was the detachable kind that you could bring down on its metallic hose for a hand-held wash. He pulled up on the diverter and the spray came on, and then he kneeled down next to the tub.

“Lean your head back for me, doll, so I can get your hair wet,” he said.

She did as he said, tipping her head back and shutting her eyes, and she felt him move the spray over her hair, while his flesh hand brushed and smoothed it back from her face.

“God, that feels good,” she said. The warm water on her back felt wonderful, and it got even better when he started to touch her. Her back was bare to him, and as he worked the water through her hair, his hand brushed against her skin, making her crave more, wanting his hands all over her.

She cursed her cracked ribs again, imagining what they could have done to each other in the privacy of her room at the Redoubt, before any of this had happened and they’d both been healthy and wanting it and…

“You ready for the soap?” he asked, snapping her out of her fantasy.

“Um, yeah,” she said, a little abashed. “Go for it. You might have to use the conditioner, too, if it’s really snarly. I should’ve bought a comb.”

“Hang onto this,” he said, and she felt him press the detached shower head into her hand, the spray hitting her legs and the underpants, which were already soaked through. She felt him put his metal hand on her left shoulder, steadying her, as his right hand went into her hair with the soap, rubbing it in small circles to lather it up, his fingertips massaging her scalp. It was just cheap hotel shampoo, but it smelled divine— crisp, fresh and clean.

“This is the best,” she said, her open mouth smiling involuntarily.

“Yeah?” he said. “Better than coffee? Good coffee?”

“Comes close,” she said. “I haven’t been this pampered in a long time.”

He actually laughed at that. “Maybe you need to go on the run with ex-assassins more often,” he said.

She giggled, only wincing a little, and said, “Maybe I do.”

He cleaned her entire head methodically, massaging the scalp and even getting behind both her ears with his fingers, all the while using only his right hand. She supposed he was afraid of being too rough with the metal one, or getting her hair caught in between the shifting plates.

“Doesn’t your arm hurt?” she asked, thinking of how much he’d used it— like it was a non-issue that he’d had an arrow driven completely through it.

“Not really,” he said. “More like an ache or a bruise. Doesn’t bother me. I guess it probably hurt at the time.”

“Didn’t seem like it,” she said, and he was quiet. She wondered if it shamed him, knowing she’d seen him that way, not in control… somebody’s puppet. Doing terrible things.

“Ready to rinse,” he said then, and he got the shower head back from her, and she tipped her head back obligingly so that he could get all the soap out. He took his time, careful to keep it away from her closed eyes.

“Can you put a little conditioner into the ends?” she asked. “You don’t have to rinse it all out. Just get it in there and rub it around, ’til it feels sort of like seaweed. I’m gonna need all the help I can get, to keep it from getting all snarly again.”

He chuckled. “Can’t say I know what seaweed feels like, but I’ll do my best.” She could hear him tapping the contents of the little bottle into his hand, and then felt the gentle tug on the back of her head as he pulled the conditioner through the last few inches of her hair.

“Think that’s good?” he asked, and she held her breath, keeping her ribs as steady as possible as she reached around with her right hand to feel it.

“Yup,” she said. “Now you just need to comb through it with your fingers, try to get any snarls out. I’ll have to teach you how to braid it for me… at least until I can do it again myself.”

“Be happy to,” he said, and he actually sounded like he meant it. She could feel him tugging gently on her hair as he ran his fingers through it, looking for snarls, patiently working them out when he found them.

“Thanks for doing this,” she said. “I already feel a million times better.”

“I think I got ‘em all,” he said. He used the spray to rinse the excess out, and then switched the water back to the faucet, leaving the shower head in the tub in case she wanted to use it. He swept all of her hair over her right shoulder, and leaned in to press a kiss to the back of her neck. “You’re all set,” he said. “I’ll let you finish up. Call me if you need help.”

“Okay,” she said. He pushed up and exited the room, pulling the door mostly shut behind him. Once he was gone, she peeled the wet towel away from her chest and dropped it over the edge of the tub to the floor, followed quickly by the wet underpants. Finally naked, she soaped up the rest of her body thoroughly, and then awkwardly reached back to switch to the shower head again, so she could rinse off.

She’d originally planned to soak in the tub for a while, but she knew the clock was ticking to secure the room for another night. Washing her hair had taken longer than she’d anticipated, but it’d been worth it. She could relax in a warm tub some other time.

She shut off the water and then carefully stood up and stepped out, hanging onto the edge with her hands until she was steady. She was still pretty shaky, and felt a little dizzy— she needed fuel. Her stomach was growling in agreement, as though the warm water had awakened a beast.

<<>>

“I am so fucking hungry,” she said, as soon as she exited the bathroom. She felt almost human again, wearing women’s underpants, an actual bra (that’d been an adventure to get on), a navy-blue V-neck knit shirt that showed off her curves, and some comfy capri yoga pants. She’d tried to wrap her hair up in the towel turban-style, as she normally would, but it was too difficult, so she’d just left it draped around her shoulders, her hair dripping. “What time is it?”

Bucky was lying on the bed sideways, still just in his underpants and looking absolutely delectable, the asshole— God, if not for her ribs, she would have just made a flying leap for the bed to tackle him. Maybe it was a good thing she couldn’t— she didn’t want to terrify him.

He looked over to check the clock. “It’s nine-forty-five.”

“Shit,” she said. “I gotta go renew the room.”

“You want me to do it?” he asked. He was already pushing up, sliding to the edge of the bed.

“Don’t we need to wrap your back?”

“Just a quick one,” he said. “Stick a sheet on there and go around me once to hold it on; that’ll be good enough.”

“Okay,” she said, accepting the Saran-wrap box he was already holding out to her. He’d stood up and held his arms out to the side, while she ripped off the big single sheet to lay down over the wound. She was more confident this time— not as afraid of hurting him— and once it was in place, she went around his body a couple of times to hold it on.

As she smoothed down the end of the plastic, making sure it was sticking, she tensed against the complaints of her own body. She could feel that the last dosage of Vicodin was wearing off fast, and that worried her— she only had one pill left, and then she’d have to rely on the ibuprofen.

She didn’t want to worry Bucky, though, so she swallowed down the pain and then, unable to resist, ran her hand down the curve of one of his butt cheeks— so lovely in the boxer briefs— before giving him a friendly pat on the ass. “All set,” she said.

He turned and raised an eyebrow, a sexy half-smile on his face. “Havin’ trouble keepin’ your hands to yourself?”

“If you keep walking around in those, I will.”

“That sounds like valuable intel,” he said, as he squatted down to get some clean clothes.

“You sure you’re okay to do the room?” she asked, worried. “Gotta hurry; it’s almost ten. You’re gonna have to stop at the car, too— we left your gloves in there last night.”

His face went flat, losing the humor from a moment ago. She had no idea how much he remembered of the night before, other than his mention of the house, when they’d first woken up.

“I’m fine,” he said, and pulled on a T-shirt, trying not to disturb the plastic wrap as he tugged it down. She watched as he put on a clean button-down shirt, stepped into a pair of pants, and pulled on some socks.

“They’re back there,” she said, when he looked around for his shoes, pointing to where she’d lined them up earlier.

“You take those off for me?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled them onto his feet, one at a time, but instead of lacing them up, he just stared ahead at nothing, a furrow between his brow. “Don’t remember.”

Darcy glanced at the clock; it was four minutes to ten. She walked around Bucky’s legs to the phone by his side of the bed, and picked up the receiver, pressing the button that was labeled _Office_. It rang a couple of times and then a woman’s voice picked up and greeted her cheerfully. It didn’t sound like the same woman who’d checked her in.

“Yeah, hi,” said Darcy, adopting an unnaturally chipper voice herself. “This is, uh, Daisy Barton, in room one-oh-nine? Yeah. We, uh, we want to keep the room for another night, but we’re running a little late. Can you mark us down and me or my boyfriend will be over in about ten minutes to pay for it?” She could see Bucky looking at her as she listened to the woman on the other end of the line. “Yeah,” she said. “Cash. Okay, great. See you soon.”

She hung up the phone and as she was walking back around Bucky’s legs, he reached out and grabbed her, pulling her back into his lap, her butt in his crotch, causing her to squeak and then say, “Ow,” stabbed with pain from the sudden movement.

“Dammit,” he said, instantly regretful, trying to release her. “God, I’m sorry, sweetheart, I wasn’t even thinking.”

She refused to be released, though, settling into his lap and replacing his arms around her as she leaned back into his chest. It was a fairly innocent position, but it was probably the most contact they’d had with each other’s bodies at one time, and she wanted to sink into it, let him surround her, all manly and yummy, pain be damned.

He relaxed again finally, following her lead. “So… Daisy Barton, huh?” he teased, his voice close to her ear. “I knew you were sweet on that archer. Saw his arrows in the trees, back at the compound.”

“I’m not sweet on him,” she said, scoffing, even though she was pretty sure he was just kidding around. “I’m such a goddamn terrible liar, I just gave her the first fake name I could think of. We’re lucky I didn’t say ‘Darcy Barnes’ and have bad guys banging on our door within the hour.”

He’d gone quiet, not responding to her joke, instead hugging her a little closer, and she felt his warm breath and the scrape of his beard on the shell of her ear before he kissed it, sending a bolt of heat to her core.

“You better not start something,” she said, even though the needy part of her was screaming, _God, please start something… no matter how much it hurts_ …

“Oh yeah?” he whispered. “What am I starting?”

“Something we can’t finish yet,” she said. She was clenching her thighs, trying to relieve the pressure. She knew he could feel her doing it, just as she could feel his body doing things underneath her yoga pants. “And I, for one, would prefer not to go through the rest of the day with the ladies’ version of blue balls.”

He started laughing quietly then, shaking with it in that way that made her so happy, and then he said, “Well, we can’t have that,” and he slid her forward a little, releasing her. She got up from his lap, her legs a little shaky. When she turned, she just barely caught the tail end of him adjusting himself through his pants.

“Glad I’m not the only one,” she said wryly, and then eased down to the duffel bag to fish out the rest of their money, as he shook with quiet laughter again. She was making light of it, but inside she was thrilling to these reassurances that they both seemed to be on the same page with this thing… even if they couldn’t do much about it yet…

She sat down and counted out the remaining bills, saying the numbers under her breath as she went. “Five hundred and forty bucks left,” she said. “The room is ninety-five a night. We should start thinking about Plan B.”

“I don’t want you to worry about nothin’,” he said. “I’ll figure somethin’ out, either way.”

“I know,” she said, “but I’m gonna worry no matter what. It’s what I do. Maybe that’s my super-power, now that I’m not feeding the stoned anymore.”

“Huh?” he said.

“Oh,” she said, remembering that he hadn’t been around for that conversation. “Just something I was talking to Steve about. Back at the place.” She frowned. “God, I wish we knew if he was okay or not. I’m really worried about him.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Bucky, sighing. “I got a way we can try to get in touch with him, see if he made it out— a safe way— but we need a computer.”

“We could go to an internet café,” she said, standing back up. “Or even a public library. They sometimes have computers for public use.”

“I used to do that,” he said. “When I was on the street. Library’s warm, got a bathroom. You can sit there all day, read books for free, long as you don’t bother no-one or stink too bad.”

“How’d you clean up? Did you go to a shelter or something?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Lots of places you can go to shower, get a meal. People’d assume I was a vet, didn’t give me any trouble.”

“You _are_ a vet,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, rubbing his jaw. “I guess I am. Still feel like a fraud, though.”

She didn't know what to say to that— she could understand his feeling that way, but it was just so unfair. “So… library’s probably our best bet, then,” she said, moving on. “Used to weirdos coming in off the street…” She was moving into his body again, where he was still sitting on the bed, and he opened his legs up so she could step between them and put her hands on his shoulders.

“That what I am?” he asked, tipping his head up to look at her. “A weirdo?”

“Excuse me, I was talking about both of us,” she said. “And of course we’re weirdos.” She moved her hand to his jaw, scrubbing at his beard, and then tucked his hair behind his ear, leaned down and gave him a slow kiss on the mouth. “All the best people are,” she added, when she pulled away.

“Okay then,” he said. “Let’s go find a library.”


	18. Chapter 18

They ended up going to the office together, after Darcy took her last Vicodin and got her new sneakers on. Bucky wanted to check out the staff— see if they had anything to worry about— so they stopped by the truck to drop off the duffel bag and grab his gloves.

The room renewal was seamlessly achieved, with no bad vibes from either of the clerks who’d taken over for the day shift. They even got the twenty-something male clerk to look up the location of the nearest library, which he helpfully wrote down for them on a piece of note paper. Darcy was amused by the way the young man kept checking out Bucky, who seemed oblivious to the attention as he counted out the cash for the room and waited for change.

Before they left the office, Darcy got a bag of tiny shortbread cookies from the vending machine, and poured them each a to-go cup of the complimentary coffee.

“Still pretty bad,” she said, trying it out once they were back in the truck. “But a step up from the other stuff.”

“Agreed,” said Bucky, taking a long drink of his. He accepted one of the tiny cookies she offered him and said, “Where to first?”

“Food,” said Darcy. “Definitely. Then library. Then a drug store. CVS, or Walgreens, or whatever they have around here. We shoulda asked the guy where the nearest one is…”

“Yeah, speaking of,” he said, “Neither of those two are gonna be a problem for us. They don’t suspect nothin’.” He turned the key in the ignition and said, “The guy was actin’ kinda weird, though.”

She did a kind of giggle-snort, and immediately swore from the pain. “Jesus fucking Christ,” she complained. “I can’t even make any of my regular sounds with these motherfucking ribs. And that was my last _fucking_ pill.”

She passed him another cookie as they were exiting the parking lot and said, “Anyway, I was gonna say that the desk guy wasn’t acting weird; he was just checking you out. Because you’re hot. Almost as shameless as me, the way he was looking at you.”

“Was that what that was?” he asked, as he turned the wheel to get back on the main road. “Knew right off he wasn’t a threat, but he kept lookin’ at me. Couldn’t figure it out. Guess I’m losin’ my assessment skills.”

“Nah, that just makes it better,” she said, “You have no idea how fine you are, and that makes it more deadly.”

“Deadly, huh?”

“Yup. You can throw away that hunting knife and just slay people with the power of your rugged good looks and your perfect ass.”

He got a little dent between his brow, not responding to her flirty jokes as he usually did. “The knife…” he said, like he hadn’t remembered it until now. “What happened to it?”

“Oh, uh… it’s under the seat. Driver’s seat.”

“Okay.” He was quiet, thinking, and she felt bad for bringing it up without warning, taking him back to that place again. But now that she had, she didn’t want to tiptoe around it.

“Did you want to talk about it?” she asked. “About what happened?”

“Not really,” he said, scanning the road ahead. They came to a red light and he braked, looked down, staring absently at the center console. “Don’t remember much happenin’… just the feelings, mostly. Don’t wanna think too hard about it.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Whenever I start to think of _her_ —” He glanced over and she said, “Wells,” to clarify, but she didn’t go on, and he didn’t ask her to. She looked up and noticed a CVS sign on the side of an ugly cream-bricked building on the opposite corner of the intersection, and pointed to it, saying, “Drug store there. We can stop on the way back.”

He didn’t bother to look— his hand was resting on the wheel, his eyes still angled away from her toward the console. “I’m glad you came and got me,” he said, softly. “Even if it was a stupid thing to do.”

She wanted to climb into his lap, inhale him. Tell him she loved him. Instead, she said, “I’ll always come and get you. If I can.”

The light turned green and they moved forward with the traffic, ending the quiet intimacy of the moment. Darcy started scanning for a safe place to eat, but there weren’t any chains or drive-thrus that she could see— all the restaurants were cute little sit-down places or independent pizzerias. As nice as those sounded, they needed more anonymity than that, and they drove for another mile before she barked out, “Burger King,” pointing to the left.

They did the drive-thru and ate in the truck again, parked in the lot, away from any other cars. “It’s good and terrible at the same time,” he said, between bites.

“I think it’s just good because we’re so fucking hungry and stressed out,” she said. “Grease is comforting when you’re anxious. Slows your brain down.”

“Is that true?” he asked.

“Fuck if I know,” she said, cramming more fries into her mouth, and then said, “What?” when Bucky shook his head, laughing.

“Sweetheart,” he said, “If I had a dollar for every time you said the F word in the last hour…”

“You know you love it,” she said, and then got a thoughtful look on her face. “We should still do our cooking thing when we go back. You know, like we talked about.”

He’d plowed through three burgers, and he finally leaned back in the seat, exhaling, and he said, “That almost sounds too good to be possible… bein’ somewhere safe, makin’ food together, like we did before…”

Darcy sat back too, and stared out the side window at the dumpster nearby. “It is possible,” she said. “I mean, I gotta believe it is. We just have to figure out what to do, to get us there… to that reality. The way I look at, just figuring out where the hell you _want_ to be is the hard part. Getting there… that’s just planning, and work.”

Looking at the piles of trash made her think of the garbage he’d thrown out, the night before, in the little town they’d driven through. “Hey, do we need to dump these plates or anything? Or get new ones? Or a different car?”

“I was gonna,” he said, “but I think we’re okay for now; already seen three other trucks just like this one since we left the motel. We blend in pretty good here. We should dump the other plates, though.” 

He reached to the back, pulled a couple more black contractor’s bags from the box of them he’d left behind the seat, and threw all the Burger King trash into one of them. He leaned down into Darcy’s footwell to fish the 4Runner plates out from where he’d left them the night before, wrapped them up in the other trash bag, and then added the bundle to the food trash and sealed it up with a knot. “I’ll get rid of it later,” he said, twisting to put the bag behind his seat. She noticed that he was moving more easily, bending and twisting his upper body without any outward sign of discomfort.

“You ready to go?” he asked.

“Yup,” she said, taking a long drink of the now-room-temperature coffee, and gave a little shake at the unpleasant taste of it. “Gum?” she asked, opting for that instead, pulling out a stick for both of them…

<<>>

The library was only a couple blocks away from the Burger King, and it made her feel nervous before they’d even gone inside. Far from being the modest brick building she’d imagined in her mind, the Greenburgh Public Library looked like something that could be on the cover of an architecture magazine, with modern lines and walls of aqua-tinted glass, and a towering brick-and-glass roof whose shape was reminiscent of the prow of a clipper ship.

“This place is too nice,” she said nervously, as they approached the entrance. “I feel like people are staring at us already.”

“They’re not,” he said, and reached out to grab her hand with his flesh one. He’d kept his metal hand covered, and held the other glove with it. It gave the appearance of someone who always wore gloves, but had removed one temporarily for some task that required more dexterity, like signing a receipt. It didn’t make much sense inside a library, but somehow it worked. It made Darcy realize that things didn’t have to make perfect sense to be believable.

The interior of the library felt just as fancy and impressive as the exterior, and she felt exposed, fraudulent— like walking into a restaurant and realizing you’re underdressed. “Stop fidgeting,” he murmured to her, as they walked through the open area next to the information desk. “Nobody’s lookin’.”

There was an array of wooden desks with brightly colored chairs in the big open room they came to, many of them occupied by older people or students studying quietly. Large doorways set into glass walls led to other rooms that she could see held the library’s collection. Amid the rows of low work desks, she saw a tall table with four computer terminals on it, two to a side. Nobody else was using them, and she made a beeline for it, her hand still in Bucky’s, pulling him along until they reached it.

Dropping his hand, she tapped her finger on the mouse button to wake up one of the computers, and then moved the cursor around a bit on the screen, clicking on the menus, and then swore quietly after a minute. “Damn,” she said, under her breath. “We can’t do anything with this. It’s just the online catalog. Can’t get out of it, go anywhere else.”

“Over there,” he said quietly, nodding to a long, outward-curving wall ahead of them and off to the side. A half-dozen brown work tables were pushed against it, and two computers were sitting on each table, with a blue task chair at each station. At the far end was a desk with a printer and copy machine on it. All but one of the stations were occupied— there was an empty one at the end farthest from the printer, next to an older lady with bobbed grey hair.

They walked over to the empty spot and Bucky pulled out the chair for her, so she could sit down in front of the computer. He stood behind her and rested his hands lightly on her shoulders as she tapped on the mouse and stared at the screen. The lady next to them glanced over and smiled, and then looked back to her own screen, which had something about turtles up on it.

Darcy clicked around, looking at the home page on the screen, and said “ _Dammit_ ,” again, emphatically, and then a quiet, “Sorry,” to the old lady, who’d glanced over a couple more times. “We can’t get on here either,” she hissed to Bucky, who’d leaned in to look over her shoulder. “We have to log in with a library card.”

The old lady glanced over again and said, quietly, “Do you kids need a computer? I’ll be done here in a second. I just need to print something out for my grandson.”

Darcy smiled involuntarily at the nice lady, but hesitated to accept the offer. Bucky spoke for her, saying, “That’d be real kind of you, ma’am.”

The woman smiled at up him and said, “Let me just send this to the printer and I’ll scoot out of your way. You can use my login. Just don’t forget to sign out when you’re all done— lots of weirdos around here.”

Darcy tried not to laugh, looking away, and felt Bucky’s hand grip her shoulder more tightly. The lady spoke again as she worked, moving the mouse around and clicking a few more times.

“Did you lose your arm in the service, honey?”

Bucky was startled, and didn’t say anything, but Darcy quickly said, “Yes. Afghanistan,” surprising herself with how natural it sounded. She didn’t know how the woman had guessed— his arm and hand were both completely covered, and he’d been very careful with it.

“I thought so,” she said, and turned in her chair to face them. Her eyes were kind. “You have the same way about you that my husband did. He lost his in Korea. Leg too. They said he would have died right there on the ground if it hadn’t been so cold… slowed down the bleeding.”

Darcy nodded, encouraging her to continue, but Bucky was still frozen, unable to respond. The lady didn’t seem fazed by his manner at all, and continued to talk to them, keeping her voice low so as not to disturb the people nearby. “Prosthetics back then… they were marvelous in their own way, but nothing like what I’ve seen in the past ten years. But the research and improvements that have been done for legs— well, it’s just not the same for arms. Albert— he got some pretty nice arms from the VA over the years, but they aren’t as advanced or comfortable as the legs. He didn’t wear the arm as much.” She looked at Darcy and said, “When he did, he kept it covered up like your man here. I guess he thought it made other people uncomfortable.”

She stopped and looked up at Bucky, a sad smile on her face. “Well. I’ll get out of your hair, let you get your work done.” She got up from her chair, pressed her bony hand gently to Darcy’s arm. “Take care of yourselves,” she said.

“We will,” said Darcy.

“Don’t forget to log out,” the woman reminded her, shaking her index finger as she shuffled away, toward the printer station.

“Wow,” said Darcy, blinking at the empty seat for a moment. “That was unexpected. Lucky break, though.” She slid over, and then peered forward at the computer screen. The lady’s turtle page was still up, but a quick bit of typing and a click got Darcy back to Google, and she said, “So, where to?” When he didn’t respond, she reached up and tugged on his shirt sleeve and said, “Hey, you. Why don’t you take a seat?”

He snapped out of wherever he’d been, dropped into the task chair next to her, and scooted over so that he could see the screen. “Sorry,” he said. “That was…” He didn’t finish the thought.

“I know,” she said. “So. Tell me where we need to go.”

“Uh, go to Amazon,” he said, scrubbing his hand over his mouth.

“What, really?” she turned her head to give him a skeptical look.

“Yeah. Steve… he set somethin’ up for me. So if somethin’ happened, if I had to take off again… I could get in touch with him, without anyone else knowing. Made me memorize it. I thought it was kinda stupid, but… maybe not.”

“Okay,” she said, still not sounding like she quite believed it, but she typed _amazon_ into the search window, and then quickly clicked on the link as soon as it came up. “What now,” she said.

“You, uh… you need to sign in,” he said, and she moved the mouse over to the link and clicked on it, bringing up the login window, and then turned to look at him, waiting, her fingers poised over the keyboard. He rubbed his forehead for a second and leaned in and gave her an email address that made her say, “Awww,” melting a little, as she typed it in. He smiled and shushed her, and then quietly dictated the password to her.

Once they were in, he said, “Now go over to the account thing, and go to lists… yeah, right there.” There was a drop-down menu for the account’s wish lists, which had names like _Art_ , _Gifts_ , and _Travel_ ; they were all marked private.

“Click on the travel one,” he said, and when she did, and the list came up, he leaned in, looking intently at it, and then he sucked in his breath and closed his eyes. “He’s okay,” he said. “Steve’s all right.”

Darcy looked at the list, which had about ten items on it— things like phone chargers, batteries, ballpoint pens. The last entry on the list was an umbrella, added just the day before. There was a grey rectangular speech bubble under the item’s description, for comments, and the text inside simply stated, ‘ _Home from trip_.’

Darcy sat back for a moment, letting out a deep breath. “Thank God,” she whispered, her eyes welling up. She felt Bucky put his gloved hand on her leg, squeezing it softly, and then he said, low, “We best get this done, get out of here before someone realizes we ain’t supposed to be on here.”

“Right,” she said, sitting up, blinking to clear her eyes, her heart pounding from the unexpected good news. “How do we write back?”

“We gotta add something to the list. Pick something boring.”

“Okay,” she said, moving the cursor up to the search field. She was at a loss for a moment. “Something boring… um… how about a hoodie?”

“What’s a hoodie?”

“You know, like a sweatshirt… with a hood.”

“Yeah, do that,” he said.

She typed _black hoodie_ into the field, and clicked to search.

“That one,” he said, pointing to a generic one priced at seventeen dollars. She went through the steps to add it, ending with a click on the grey _View Your List_ button. “Okay,” said Bucky. “Now click to add a comment.”

“What should we say?” she asked, as she pressed the mouse button.

He leaned over, resting his bent arms on his thighs, and sighed. “Hadn’t planned on doin’ this so soon,” he said. “But we’re runnin’ out of money, and we don’t know the next time we’ll be able to get on a computer.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Plus it don’t feel right, you bein’ stuck with me, with your ribs hurtin’ so bad.”

“I’m not stuck with you,” she said a little sharply, and then lowered her voice when a couple of people glanced over. “I’m not _stuck_ ,” she repeated, softly.

He sighed again, still leaned over, his right hand wrapped around his left wrist, clasping and releasing it between his legs as he thought. She wanted to suggest they try to meet up with Steve somewhere, for both their sakes, but she didn’t want to push him, make him think he had to bring her in if he wasn’t ready to go also. Finally he spoke up, his voice low.

“I think we should give a time and place to meet up.”

She let out the breath she’d been holding. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, where. When. What should I say?”

He looked up, sat up a little, putting his hands on his thighs. “Put down…”

Her fingers hovered over the keys, waiting. 

He took another ten seconds to think it over, and then he said, “Put down the date. Two days from now. Just numbers.”

“Like this?” she asked.

“Yeah. Now put, ‘CI Terminal. Fourteen hundred’. Numbers, not words, for the time.”

“Like this?” she said again.

“Yeah.”

“What’s C-I?” She was whispering.

“Coney Island.”

<<>>

After they’d finished leaving the message on the Amazon list, they’d spent five more minutes online, looking up a map of the New York subway system so that Bucky could memorize the route— the lines had gone through a lot of changes since the last time he’d been in Brooklyn.

“Darnit,” she said, as they were walking back to the truck outside. “I shoulda Googled _broken ribs_. I wanted to see if it’s a bad idea to wrap them up.”

“I never do,” he said, “but I remember them doin’ it to guys back in the war.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t really help,” she grumbled.

He reached up and rubbed the back of her neck in a comforting gesture. “If this works out with Steve, we’ll be able to find out whatever we want in a couple of days.”

They stopped at the CVS on the way back, Bucky staying in the truck while Darcy went in. She bought a basic hair trimmer kit— it was an electric clipper unit, and came with attachments for different lengths, a cheap set of shears, and a comb. She also grabbed a package of disposable razors and some shaving cream, in case he wanted to shave.

On her way out of the personal care section, she passed by an array of condoms, beckoning to her from their little square boxes. She paused— it was tempting. Just in case. She knew, with the state of her ribs, that it was unlikely they’d be doing anything that… athletic, any time soon, but she didn’t want to get into a situation where they needed them, but didn’t have them. But neither did she want to seem presumptuous— they were still dancing around the physical nature of this thing, and they’d barely fooled around beyond kissing. If she was honest with herself, she still had a shred of a doubt about how far he even wanted to take it. She’d had enough evidence to know that his body was on board, but she didn’t know where his head was at. She ended up leaving the aisle empty-handed.

On impulse, she grabbed a box of Froot Loops as she headed up to the checkout— she’d seen them as road-trip food since she was a kid. She would have liked to grab a six-pack of beer as well, but the older-lady clerk at the checkout looked like the card-anyone-under-fifty type, and Darcy didn’t want to raise any flags by not having an ID.

She paid for the stuff and took the paper bag in her arms, holding it steady against her chest as she stepped out of the store. The final Vicodin was helping, but not as much as the double doses she’d taken before. She could imagine her time with real pain relief running out, like the red hourglass of doom from The Wizard of Oz.

She scanned the lot, looking for the 4Runner, but didn’t see it. Just when she was starting to feel a tingle of anxiety, the truck came up from behind and stopped at the curb in front of her. She stepped down and opened the door, wincing as she bent to get in.

“You hurtin’ again?” he said, noticing her grimace as she put the bag by her feet.

“Yeah,” she said, not bothering to lie. “I’m a little worried.”

It was only a few minutes’ drive back to the motel, and Bucky came around to her side after parking, opened the door for her, took the CVS bag, and helped her get out. He was carrying a black trash bag, and moved the CVS bag over to that hand as well so he could open the room door with the key card.

Once they were inside and they’d locked and chained the door, she looked around for a few seconds and said, “Dammit, we forgot to bring in the duffel. I’m gonna need it soon, when this pill wears off completely.”

“I, uh… I tossed it, when you were in the store,” he said. “Just the empty bag, I mean. All the stuff’s in here,” he said, holding up the black trash bag. He set it down on the bed, along with the stuff from CVS, and shrugged out of the long-sleeved shirt, tossing it onto the bed along with the gloves.

“You threw out a designer bag?” She laughed a second, and then clenched up from the pain. “Shit, we coulda sold that on eBay for a few hundred dollars.” She thought about it for a moment and said, “Except we couldn’t, because we don’t have a computer, or a home, or anything else we need to function…” She squatted to dig through the Walmart bags, looking for water.

“I’m sorry, doll,” he said, as though it were all his fault. “Hopefully you’ll be safe with Steve in a couple days.”

“What?” she said, looking up. “No!” she protested. “That wasn’t, like, a dig against you or anything.” Then she narrowed her eyes. “You’re coming with me, right? To meet Steve?”

“Course I am,” he said. “Wouldn’t make you do that yourself.”

“And what happens when we get there?”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

She was getting tired in her crouched position, and just gave up and sat down fully on the carpet. “I mean, you’re not gonna like, turn into a puff of smoke and disappear the second I turn my back, are you? Once we find Steve?”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. He sounded like he was choosing his words carefully. “I need to make sure we’re safe, that it’s okay to go in. We can’t just walk in there thinkin’ everything’s fine, and it’ll all go back to normal.” He sighed. “Like it ever was.”

“I know that,” she said, and she was trying not to sound irritated, but she was in pain and it was making her a little raw. “I just want to make sure that whatever happens, we’re still doing it together, right?”

“We already talked about this,” he said, sounding a little clipped himself. “I’m not gonna leave you.”

“Promise?” She was looking at him, and he made eye contact with her finally.

“Darcy, I promise.” When she didn’t say anything, he said, “Do you believe me?”

She’d started looking through the bags again, but she stopped, looked up at him, found his eyes, which were following her movements. She sighed, pressed her lips together. “I want to,” she finally said.

He tipped his head down, making a frustrated noise. “I don’t know what else I can tell you,” he said.

“Hey, where’d this come from?” she asked, pulling a little bottle of bright reddish-orange nail polish out of one of the bags.

He looked at her again, rubbing the back of his neck. He seemed a little shy all of a sudden. “I, uh… I saw that back at that store. At Walmart. I noticed, first day I met you, back at Stark’s… you had your toes done up, bright red like that. You did ‘em up different, almost every day.” He turned away a little, dropping his voice. “I guess I thought you might like somethin’ ‘sides… you know, just for… I don’t know. Probably stupid.”

She wordlessly pushed herself up, forgetting the water and ignoring her pain, and made her way over to where he was standing, and wrapped her arms around his hips, one hand still clutching the little bottle. He seemed surprised by her response, but he accepted the embrace, his right hand coming up to comb through her hair. She squeezed him a little, her hands curling into the fabric around his hips.

“God, that’s only, like, one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.”

“You serious?” he asked, scoffing. “A jar of nail color?” His metal hand was touching her too, stroking up and down along the line of her spine. “Doll, you been hangin’ out with the wrong people.”

“It’s not about the thing,” she said. “It’s about….” She stopped, trying to put it into words. “We’re like, in the midst of a fucking crisis— like, survival mode— and meanwhile you go and get me something nice, that you knew I would like, just— you know, because. To brighten my motherfucking day. Most of my other boyfriends didn’t even put that much thought into my freakin’ birthday, much less hit me with a random act of sweetness.”

She pulled in a deep breath, eyes stinging from the pain in her chest, and the feelings swirling through her, and then let it out slowly. “I’m sorry for what I said. Making you think I don’t believe you. I do. I really do. I just… get scared. I like to know what’s happening, know how to plan things out in advance, if I can. Even if it’s gonna be something bad. And we can’t do that here, and it’s making me kind of psycho.”

He tipped his chin down so that he could kiss the top of her head and spoke into her hair. “That ain’t psycho. Shows how smart you are.” A moment later he said, “And we will have a plan. You don’t gotta worry. I know you will anyway, but I’m sayin’ it anyhow.”

She squeezed him a little tighter, and then she tilted her head up so that she could look at him. “Gimme a kiss,” she said.

He pulled both his hands up, so he could frame her face with them, his thumbs stroking the delicate skin next to her ears, and he leaned down to softly catch her full lips between his, and she sighed and shut her eyes, letting his mouth taste the different parts of her lips as he held her. She wasn’t even moving— it was all him— all she could do was breathe, open-mouthed, and it was delicious and tender and made any lingering bad feelings melt away, powerless.

“You’re gonna give me beard-burn,” she finally said softly, curling her fingers in his scruff, “but I don’t even care. Feels too good.”

He pulled back. “I’d shave, but I don’t have the right stuff.”

“I got you some at CVS. If you want to. I mean, don’t do it on my account— because this whatever-o’clock-shadow is damn sexy—” His head tilted down shyly at that, as she ran her hands over his jaw and then up into his long hair, tucking it behind his ears. “But I was thinking if we’re gonna cut your hair, you might want to shave too, just to feel all fresh and clean before you start sexin’ it up again.”

He chuckled at that, but then said, “I might,” rubbing at his beard himself. “Lemme get your pills first, in case you want ‘em,” he said, and dug around in the trash bag until he found the ibuprofen. She took the bottle from him, and then shuffled over to the little desk and sat down in the chair. She was still holding the nail polish in her left hand, and she set it down on the desk, along with the pills.

He crouched down by the pile of Walmart bags, and found the one that had the brick of water in it. He ripped open the case and pulled two bottles out, stood and handed one of them to her.

“I just realized there’s no mini-fridge,” she said. “You’d think for ninety-five bucks a night we’d at least get a fucking mini fridge.”

“I can get you some ice, if you want cold water,” he said. “Saw some glasses in the bathroom.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “Just seems like a ripoff, is all.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “This room is pretty nice. Glad you were callin’ the shots; I prolly woulda vetoed it.”

“It scared me a little,” she said quietly, as she shook a couple of orange tablets out of the pill bottle. She shoved them into her mouth and washed them down with a swallow of water before continuing. “When you were shut down.”

He went back over to the bed and dumped out the CVS bag. He found the package of razors and the shaving cream and stood there for a minute, holding them in his hands. He was in profile, his head tilted down, and she saw him shut his eyes as he exhaled. “I’m sorry I scared you,” he said, and he sounded so sad.

“Hey,” she said, but he didn’t look up. “I wasn’t scared _of_ you. Although that place freaked me the fuck out.”

She cursed her stupid injuries that were keeping her from jumping up, as she wanted to do: to grab him and turn him and wrap her arms around him. She’d never before realized what a physical person she was— how much she conveyed her real thoughts through action, while her words were more of the cover-story. Now she was having to do the reverse, and it was frustrating.

“I was just worried— didn’t know what to do, how to help.”

“What you did was fine,” he said, quietly. “Better than fine.” He still wasn’t looking at her— it seemed like it was easier for him that way. “I don’t know how long I was standin’ there. I wanted to move, wanted to get away from there, the stuff I was seein’ in my head. Come back to you and drive away. I kept tellin’ myself to move, but I couldn’t. Don’t know how long I woulda stood there, if you hadn’t…”

She was almost holding her breath, not wanting to startle him while he got it out. She had questions— she wanted to know what he’d seen, what memories that place had awoken in him— but there was no way she was going to ask him, take him there if he didn’t give her some sign that he wanted to.

He’d stopped talking; it seemed like he’d said all he wanted to, or maybe all he was able to. She waited another minute, to make sure. “Why don’t you go clean up,” she finally said. “We can cut your hair after, if you still want to.”

“Okay,” he said, and he started to head to the bathroom, but turned back to ask, “You want the TV on?”

“No,” she said. “But can you give me my Froot Loops?” As she watched him walking back around to the side of the bed, she noticed a thin pink-covered paperback book lying on the bedspread, next to the stuff from CVS. “What’s that book? I didn’t buy any book.”

“Oh,” he said, “I, uh… I sorta grabbed it back at the library. You know those bins they had by the entrance, the used books for sale?”

Darcy blinked at him. “Dude, not only did I not notice you _stealing_ a book— I didn’t even notice the fucking bins. Jesus. And here I was, thinking my spy skills were improving… So, what is it, anyway? Please tell me it’s a trashy novel, and we can entertain each other, reading it out loud.”

“Uh, it’s a book of poems,” he said, and she could tell he was a little self-conscious about it, like maybe she was going to make fun of him for it. “I took it when you were tyin’ your shoe.”

“Steve said you liked to read kooky stuff, like pulp magazines.”

“I read all kinds of things,” he said, a little defensively.

“Who’s the poet?”

“Uh… guy named Pablo Neruda. Think I used to read him, you know… before. But these were published after. Nineteen fifty-something. I started readin’ it when you were in the drug store.”

“Are they any good? The poems?”

“Uh, yeah…,” he said, “They’re … yeah. They’re good.”

“Huh,” she said again. “Well, maybe you can read me some later. Now gimme my cereal.”

He picked up the box of cereal that was lying on the bed, took a dubious look at the brightly-colored cartoon bird on the front of the box, and then stretched his arm out to her to hand it over. “That supposed to be some kind of food?”

“FYI,” she said, ripping open the box and then the thick plastic bag inside, “I don’t hand out kisses to people who mock my snacks.” She plunged her hand into the dry cereal and scooped some out, shoved it ungracefully into her mouth. “Oh my God,” she groaned around the mouthful. “I haven’t had these for so long. They taste exactly the same.”

Bucky grinned, pulling his lower lip under his teeth for a moment, and then walked right up to her, stuck his own hand into the box, pulled out a handful of cereal, and crammed it into his mouth just as she had.

“See?” she said. “It’s awesome, right?”

He was trying not to laugh while he chewed, and when he finally swallowed, he took a drink of water, wiped his mouth with the back of his forearm, and said, still snickering, trying to recover, “Doll, it’s so bad I don’t even know the word for it.”

She smacked his leg, but had a huge smile on her face, and then he grinned again and leaned down and gave her big, messy kiss, holding the back of her head with his hand, and he made a murmured noise of approval in his throat. “Now that’s more like it,” he said, low.

“Go shave your beard, mountain man,” she said affectionately, and took another big handful of cereal in defiance.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, his blue eyes sparkling.

<<>>

He’d left the bathroom door open, and she could hear him working in there, the water trickling and the occasional _tap-tap-tap_ of the razor on the edge of the sink. He must have been taking his time, because it took a while; in the meantime, she moved herself to the bed, shoving all the stuff over and using all the pillows to prop herself up against the headboard.

She leaned forward to grab the little paperback that was still lying on the bedspread; it had a title in both Spanish and English: _Cien sonetos de amor / 100 Love Poems_. She opened the book to a random page and started reading, and had her mind blown a little. This was not what she’d expect to find on an ex-assassin’s bookshelf… or then again, maybe it was: it was heady, romantic, beautiful.

By the time she heard the water being turned off, the ibuprofen had knocked her pain back a little bit again, though it was nowhere as nice as the Vicodin. She let the book fall shut on the bed and felt out the edges of her discomfort, taking a series of long, deep breaths with her eyes shut.

She heard him come back into the room, and when she opened her eyes, he was standing by the bed, drying his face and neck with a white washcloth. He’d only had a few days of growth, but he looked younger without it, more vulnerable.

“C’mere,” she said, making grabby hands at him as she moved to sit at the edge of the bed, one leg dangling over. The mattress dipped down as he sat next to her, and she reached her hands up to feel his face. She could smell the minty freshness left behind by the shaving cream. “Mmm, so _smooooth_ ,” she crooned, and then crooked her finger at him, right next to her open-mouthed smile, and wiggled one of her eyebrows.

His eyes softened as his lips parted, and one side of his mouth pulled up just slightly in that sexy, sleepy grin he had. He tossed the washcloth onto the bed and held her face steady with his hand as he leaned in and kissed her— just one kiss, soft and sweet, like they had all the time in the world.

As she drew back, opening her eyes, she pulled her lips in to taste them, and said, slowly, taking her time, “Wow. Okay. I know I said the beard was sexy, but… holy cow.” She reached out her hand and touched his lips with her fingers. “There’s something about… with nothing in the way… it’s almost filthy.”

His tongue dipped out to wet his bottom lip and he did that half smile thing again, his eyes still hooded as they flicked to her mouth again. “That a good thing?”

She'd had a quip ready for him, but instead she just said, "Yeah," a little breathlessly, and pulled on his shirt to bring him back in for more.

He took it further this time, making a sound in his throat as he went deeper, and her chest rose and fell on a wave of desire, and before she could rethink it, she was boldly swinging her leg over to pull herself into his lap, putting her hands on his shoulders and straddling him on the edge of the bed.

His hands automatically went to the sweep of her hips, to hold her to him. Her hourglass body flared out dramatically from the waist down, and in the yoga pants, her shape wasn’t hidden at all, something he seemed to appreciate, exhaling in satisfaction as he ran his hands over the full curves of her body.

They were both breathing heavily now, and it was hurting, but she made a sound of approval when he pulled her in even closer, so that their bodies were slotted together just right. She could feel the heat of him, his body responding against her as their mouths moved together again, breathing into each other, and if she could have magicked away their clothing, she would have let him slide right into her.

She wanted to keep it going— wanted to move against him and show him everything she was feeling, what he did to her— but as usual, she wasn’t able to hide the way it was hurting her, and he put his flesh hand between them, just a light touch against her chest, as he pulled his lips away, pressing his forehead against hers as he panted, trying to catch his breath.

“Doll,” he said, and he took a few seconds. “We gotta… we either gotta cut my hair or I gotta go take another shower.” He made a rueful but amused sound. “Or maybe both.”

He moved his hands to her waist and helped her lift off and slide back to her pillows. He returned to profile, still sitting at the edge of the bed, putting his palms on his thighs. He was leaning a bit into his hands, and he let out a deep breath.

“Shower, I think,” he said. “Then, uh… if you still wanna cut my hair…”

“Do you want me to?” she said quietly. She felt stunned and sleepy with lust, and part of her just wanted to sink down into the bed and close her eyes and think about sexy things…

“Yeah,” he said. “I think I do. But only if those pills start helpin’.”

“Okay,” she said. She gave him a soft smile, her eyes half shut. “I’ll be here. Take your time.”

He looked over at her then, his long bangs falling out from behind his ear, and smiled affectionately at her, with just a hint of humor. “You too,” he said, and leaned in for one more soft kiss before he pushed up and shuffled away to the bathroom.

<<>>

She was a little nervous at first— partly because she hadn’t done a haircut in a while, and didn’t want to mess it up, but mostly because he’d been so against the idea, the first time she’d suggested it. She didn’t want to push him too hard.

They decided to do the cut in the bathroom, where the cleanup would be easier. He’d dragged the chair in there, so that he could sit while she moved around him. At first she’d assumed he’d want to face the mirror, so that he could see what was going on, but he’d turned it so that he was sideways to it, apparently not wanting to look at himself that much. He was clean and brisk-smelling from his shower, and had pulled on a fresh pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt.

She started by combing through his damp hair, first with her fingers, and then with the comb that’d come with the kit, just to get him used to the feel of her moving around him. Once he was all combed out, she draped a towel around his shoulders and said, “All right then: last chance for long hair.”

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he said, in his low voice. “I trust you.”

“Okey-dokey,” she said. “I’m, uh… I’m just gonna take a little of the length off with the shears, first, so I can see what I’m doing, and then I’ll switch to the clippers, okay?”

He nodded his assent, and she blew out the last of her nerves, and then started to part and comb his hair all around, gathering up all the stuff above his ears toward a center line at the top of his head.

“Your hair is so long,” she said. “I shoulda bought some clips or something.”

He didn’t respond, but she guessed that he was still doing okay. She heard the sound of his metal arm shifting, the plates resettling, and she said, “Okay, I’m gonna start trimming some off now.”

Using the index and middle fingers of her left hand, she pulled up a section of the hair at the top of his head, measured out a generous amount to save, pinched it between her fingers, and then cut in a straight line above the pinch point. Using that first cut as a guide, she continued trimming, confidently removing several inches of excess length all around. Wisps of cut hair were drifting to the white tile floor, and she could see his chest rising and falling as he breathed slowly and steadily.

“Doing okay?” she asked, pausing with the shears.

“Yeah,” he said. “It actually feels kinda nice.”

She combed through his hair again, snipped off a few long pieces she’d missed, and then set the shears down on the bathroom counter. “Okay,” she said. “Next up is the clippers. They’re kinda noisy, so I’m gonna let you get used to them first.”

The clipper unit was just like the one she’d used in college. It was a harsh, vibrating, buzzy thing that would startle anyone. After plugging it in, she handed it to Bucky so that he could turn it on personally, and get used to it before she used it on him. He flipped the switch— it came on with a jolt, and sounded like an enraged bumblebee.

“It’s like what they used at basic,” he said, turning it over in his hand. “Shavin’ our heads. Jesus. That was… over seventy years ago.”

“I didn’t even know they had electric clippers back then,” she said, in all seriousness.

He laughed. “You better not start callin’ me Grandpa.” He handed the clipper back to her, and she turned it off to snap a guide comb onto it.

“I’m not gonna be cutting it _that_ short,” she said, and then quickly amended, “Unless you want me to.”

“I trust your judgement,” he said. “Do what you want.”

She switched it back on, but found she was hesitant again, afraid to dive in. “I’m gonna trim the the sides and back first,” she said, “and then blend up to the part, and then I’ll finish up with the shears at the end.”

“Sounds good,” he said. “Proceed.”

She moved the clippers close to his ear on his right side, only to stall again. His good-humored insistence that she “get on with it” gave her the last bit of courage she was missing, and she finally committed, gently gliding it upward against his scalp. Once she got going, the muscle memory kicked in, and she confidently made her way around his head, using her other hand to steady or angle him as needed, checking his body language frequently to make sure he was okay.

After several minutes of quiet concentration, she stood back a little, assessing her work, using her hand to fluff the shortened hair. Her ribs were already starting to bother her again, but she wasn’t about to quit in the middle of the haircut. It took a couple more passes and a few more changes with the guide combs, until she got him to the point where he had a pretty decent haircut that only needed minor tweaks.

“Okay,” she said, straightening up. She was sore, but she knew she was in the home stretch. “I’m gonna use the clippers without a guide for just a minute, to clean up your neck— you’re a luscious man-beast, so you’ve got all these little dark fluffies hanging on back here.”

“I’m a what?” he asked, chuckling, and it was making his body shake a little, as she removed the towel from his shoulders.

“Hey,” she said, with a mock stern voice. “Stop moving around, or you’ll make me fuck it up.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, and tried to keep himself still, while she brushed the bare clipper carefully up his neck, cleaning up all the little stray hairs there. She turned it off and set it down on the counter.

“All righty,” she said. “I think we’re done with the clippers.” She used a dry washcloth to brush the back of his neck off. “How’s it feel so far?”

“Good,” he said, reaching his flesh hand back to feel the short hair above his neck. “Lighter.”

“We’re almost done.”

She picked up the shears again, blending all the clipped parts together, and finished off by adjusting the length of his bangs— not too short; not too long— perfect for the clean-yet-tousled look she knew would suit him. She leaned back a bit, assessing again, ignoring her pain, and then went over his entire head with the comb again, snipping stray hairs here and there, and running her fingers through it to make his bangs look more natural.

“I think that’s it,” she said, finally, and he tipped his head down to run his flesh hand along the back of his neck again.

She’d gotten so sucked into the process, concentrating so hard on the hair alone, that she’d not yet had any sense of what he actually looked like. She put down the shears, took a few steps back, and said, “Okay, handsome; lemme see— show me your face.”

He tilted his head up, still rubbing at the back of his neck with his hand, a little nervously now, and made eye contact with her, his lips slightly parted.

Her own mouth fell open, and for a second she couldn’t speak. When she finally did, it was one word:

“Whoa.”


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, have some more angst.  
> Sorry :(  
> I am a cruel and horrible person.  
> \-----------------------------

“God, you’re really him, aren’t you,” she said breathlessly, taking him in. “You’re Bucky Barnes.”

It came out of her mouth so quickly that it was already over before she could stop it, striking like a hit-and-run… and it was instantly apparent that it was the worst thing she could have said.

He flinched, his eyes still holding hers for one excruciating second, and then he ripped his head from her gaze, looking downward, his breath coming heavy.

“Bucky, I—”

“No,” he said, sharply, and pushed out of the chair so abruptly that he almost knocked it over, and he looked like he wanted to flee, but she was blocking him, frozen, between him and the doorway, so he turned away instead, shoulders heaving, so he wouldn’t have to look at her. His flesh arm came up, and she could see in the mirror that he was holding it in a fist, pressed to his forehead. He was trying to hold it together.

Her heart was pounding— it was too fast; they’d gone from wonderful to this in a matter of seconds… it wasn’t supposed to be like this; it didn’t have to be… She reached out to touch the back of his arm, but he jerked away from the brush of her fingers, and it killed her, her own hand pulling back like it’d been burned.

Just like that— his comfort, his trust, everything they’d built up together, it’d shrunk back, recoiled from her… and she’d been the cause. She’d done that, with her stupid words. Tears began to gather in her eyes and her breathing sped up, trying to keep it in, keep it together, and she hurt— it hurt everywhere; not just her body, her ribs, but worse than that: in her heart— in the pain of the evidence that she’d stabbed him, and the knowledge that she couldn’t undo it, couldn’t rewind and take it back.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean it like—” She stopped, made herself shut up for once. It wasn’t time for an explanation, an attempt to justify. She pressed her lips together but her chest constricted and she couldn’t keep herself from making a whimpering sound as she tried to hold the tears back.

He was still turned away, keeping his face averted from the mirror. It was clear he didn’t want to— couldn’t— look at himself. But he turned his head the other direction, away from it, until it was almost in profile to her, looking over his shoulder, and he said, “Don’t do that,” his voice low, gravelly, but oddly flat. “Don’t cry. You’re gonna hurt yourself.”

It made it worse, that even in his anger and betrayal he still fucking cared, still worried about her well-being. She backed out of the room, hanging on just long enough to get around the corner and into the main room, and she stumbled her way to the far side of the bed, sitting down heavily, the cracked ribs inside slicing her with pain that matched the way she felt, and she let the sobs come anyway, hugging herself low around her stomach— it hurt too much, what she’d done to him.

There was a horrible smashing sound, followed by glass falling; he’d broken the mirror with something— she imagined his fist, the metal one— and then she could hear him in there too, his own muffled, stilted crying, and the sound of his trying to restrain it, and still the voice in her own head: _you did this_.

He was in there a few more minutes, and she could hear his breathing, the sound of him trying to calm down, and then he emerged from the room, and he wouldn’t look at her as he moved around, his actions brisk. She could hear him behind her, rummaging in the contractor’s bag on the bed. He grabbed the key-card and the 4Runner keys off the desk, keeping his face turned away as he leaned past her body to get them, and then went to the door, not bothering with shoes, and then paused, his fingers frozen on the handle. His forehead was almost leaning against the door, eyes shut, as he spoke.

“I gotta… I’m gonna get some air.” He said it with difficulty, his voice cracking. “I’ll be back.”

He tried to open the door then, but the chain was still on, and he sucked back a sob, frustrated, as he stopped to undo it, and then he opened the door and was gone, shutting it behind him with a thud. In the first minute of silence that followed, she realized with a sick feeling that he’d been so desperate to get away, he hadn’t even bothered to cover up his arm.

<<>>

It took her a while to move. For a long time she just sat there, the tears running down her face, her body like stone, as she replayed it over and over in her head. It’d been so good when it’d just been her hands on him, doing the work— he’d been so relaxed and trusting, joking around even— and then she’d gone and ruined it with her big stupid mouth.

The truth was that he was breathtaking, regardless of how he chose to identify or present himself, and that’s what she’d known she’d see: this beautiful, expressive human being who would be radiant in her eyes, in whatever design… but when he’d looked up at her, the combination of the cut and the clean shave was so striking, unexpected… she’d reacted and spoken out of pure instinct— seeing the face from her history book staring back at her, alive, in more startling clarity than ever before— it was intense, and she’d blurted it out, unthinking.

God, Steve was going to be wrecked when he saw him… if it had that much impact on her, when she hadn’t even known him before, as a real person… she felt like she should warn Steve somehow… _don’t freak over the hair_ … If the meet-up was even still on schedule, after this…

She was in a daze, and her head ached from crying, along with the rest of her leaden body. Her ribs burned and she imagined she had pieces of glass cutting her inside, which made her remember the mirror. She pushed herself off the bed, taking the pain like punishment, and walked on heavy legs to the bathroom.

He’d definitely punched the mirror. There was a crater in the wall behind what must have been the point of impact with the glass, most of which had splintered and fallen in shards onto the countertop or down to the floor, to mingle with the trimmings of his hair, still scattered there like fallen leaves. She wondered if he’d done it before looking at himself, or as a response to it. She hoped it wasn’t the latter. She could accept his being angry for what she’d said, but it would kill her if this was him hating himself, because of what she’d done… whom she’d made him look like.

It was incredibly short-sighted of her, that it hadn’t even crossed her mind beforehand— she’d been so focused on the positive intentions that she’d completely missed the potential dangers: the feelings and memories it could dredge up, the negative associations he apparently had with his former self or the ways others saw him.

For her it’d seemed largely practical: a way to free him from that constant blowing away of his bangs, tucking them behind his ears (a gesture that now seemed painfully sweet)— but also, she’d been so adamant that it be a choice for _him_. A way for _him_ to choose his own skin, remake himself even in simple ways— not this grotesque forcing of an identity upon him, as she’d done with her words. She had no way of knowing how he would have responded to the haircut if she hadn’t said anything, but certainly there was no way for him to see it now with untainted eyes.

She stared at the mess for several minutes, just occupying that space where he’d broken apart again, like she was looking at his heart laid out on the floor. She trudged back to the main room, painfully dragging the chair out of the bathroom as she went, returning it to its place by the desk. She grabbed the contractor’s bag, dumping the rest of its contents onto the bed. The bottle of vodka was in there, and she took it, along with the now-empty trash bag and one of the Walmart bags, back to the bathroom.

There were still two glass tumblers on the bathroom counter, the type equally suited for juice or whiskey; they had thin cardboard covers on them for sanitary purposes, which had also protected them from the broken pieces of mirror. She took one and rinsed it out anyway, tossing the circle of cardboard aside. She filled the glass halfway with vodka, and took a long swallow, grimacing as it went down, burning her throat and stomach. The toothbrushes were sitting there by the sink, probably showered with glass dust— she rinsed them both out thoroughly and stuck them upright in the other glass tumbler. Then she got to work cleaning up the rest of the countertop, and the mess on the floor.

Cleaning up broken glass mixed with hair would suck even with the proper tools, but it sucked a lot harder without them. She did the best she could, first picking up all the large shards of glass with her fingers and placing them in the empty Walmart bag. She swept up the hair and the smaller pieces of glass using toilet paper, and finally rinsed up all the tiny hairs and glass dust with a damp washcloth. She put everything together into the black trash bag, and twirled the gathered ends around a few times to make a neck she could knot. She still didn’t feel good about anyone walking barefoot in there, so she spread a couple of bath towels out on the floor to step on, and put the bag of broken glass just outside the door.

She finished the glass of vodka, rinsed out her mouth with water, and then brushed her teeth, her actions robotic. They’d only gotten half a night’s sleep before getting up that morning— she’d have been exhausted even without all the drama— and lying down was all she wanted to do. She went back to the bed, stripped off her shorts, unhooked her bra and ripped it off from underneath her shirt, again taking the sharp pain as deserved punishment, and then slid down into the bed, cocooning herself in the covers. The clock on the bedside table said it was twenty minutes to four. She was all cried out, and had nothing left but emptiness.

<<>>

She woke up and immediately looked at the clock: it was after five, and Bucky was still gone. She’d slept a little more than an hour, and she felt stupid and heavy and sad.

She grabbed the remote for the TV, moving too quickly and paying for it with a fresh stab to the chest, a reminder that she was physically useless. Lying back on her side, curled so that she could see the flatscreen high up on the wall, she clicked it on. The default volume was an assault, and she scrambled to mute the talking heads on the local news program, their voices offensive in the face of her misery. She clicked through the channels, hoping to find something dumb that would complement the numbness she felt, and to pass the time until Bucky came back.

If he came back.

She pushed that thought away as soon as it bubbled up: he’d said he’d be back. He’d told her he’d never just leave her. Presumably that included after she made him feel alone and betrayed by the one person he thought he could trust at the moment, but… _fuck_. She was going to trust it. She was going to believe him. He said he was coming back, and he would.

She felt a split second of relief when she saw that Caddyshack was on— it had been one of her mom’s favorites, and Darcy had been introduced to it at an inappropriately young age— but to her disappointment she realized it was on the Spanish network. She kept it on anyway, staring vacantly as the familiar scenes played out on the screen.

The Spanish translation of the title, she discovered during the breaks, was Los locos del golf. Darcy didn’t know much Spanish, but she knew enough to almost snicker at that. The movie was dubbed— horribly— and she wound up muting the TV again, just watching the scenes in silence. During one of the painfully long commercial breaks— the movie was going to last for three more hours at this rate— she pushed herself out of the bed and padded over to the curtains, parting them just enough to peek outside. The sun was starting to go down.

 _Where are you. I hope you’re okay_.

 _I’m sorry_.

She went to the bathroom to retrieve her vodka glass, and poured herself another generous serving, because why the fuck not. It actually seemed to be helping with the pain a bit, giving her whole body a chemical cushion closer to what the Vicodin had done— the pain was still there; she just didn’t care as much. She took the glass over to the desk and moved the chair closer to it, turned it to face the TV, and sat down.

The little bottle of red nail polish was still sitting there on the desk, and the sight of it now made her eyes well up again. She refused a fresh bout of crying, and picked up the bottle instead, finally looking at the label: the shade was called _Meet Me at Sunset_. She hoped it was like some kind of sign, and that he'd be back before the sun was fully down. She wrapped her left arm around her ribcage to keep it steady as she shook the jar, the little mixing ball inside making a _clackety-clack_ noise.

She sat there and drank her booze and did her nails— both fingers and toes— slowly and carefully, thinking of Bucky, and the things she wanted to say to him.

<<>>

Her nails were dry and it was fully dark outside when he returned. She was back in the bed, lying on top of the bedspread in her shirt and underpants, and she pushed herself up with some difficulty, pulling her legs under herself criss-cross style as he pushed the door open with his hip, his hands full. He was carrying a large Burger King bag and two drink cups with straws sticking out of them, and was holding the key card between his teeth. His metal arm was still fully visible.

“Don’t get up,” he said, speaking around the card, when she moved to help him. He set the stuff down on the desk, took the key-card out of his mouth, and then went back to lock and chain the door.

“What’s that smell?” he said, closing his eyes. “I know that smell.”

“I did my nails,” she said. Her voice sounded small, stupid.

He opened his eyes and just looked at her. God, he was beautiful. His haircut was so exposing, it was almost awkward to look at him— like it was an invasion, where he’d always had the option to hide before. She was so relieved to see that he was okay that her eyes were almost stinging again. He seemed to be on the verge of saying something, but finally he just went back over to the desk and said, “Chocolate, or strawberry?”

“What?”

“Milkshake. Chocolate or strawberry?”

“Chocolate,” she said, and he handed her one of the drink cups, and she took it, and it was cold, and some part of her brain processed it as refreshing as she pulled on it through the straw, but she couldn’t really enjoy it. Her eyes and her thoughts were stuck on him, just seized in the relief that he was there— alive, speaking, sound… and not noticeably upset any more.

He glanced up at the muted TV, and then back to her again. “You hungry?” he asked. He seemed nervous.

“I don’t know,” she said, with honesty. “I think I’ll just have the shake.” She was in a state of self-defense shut-down, bracing herself for some horrible proclamation she felt sure he was going to deliver, as soon as he was ready. Food sounded horrible.

He sat down at the desk, pulled some wrapped-up food out of the bag. They sat there in silence, the only sound in the room the crinkling of the fast-food wrappers as he emptied them and then balled them up. When he’d finished, he got up, threw all of the garbage into the little plastic wastebasket next to the desk, and headed over to the bathroom.

When he got to the doorway he stopped, and she heard him sigh before he went in, shutting the door behind him. She could hear him pee and flush the toilet, and then the sink was running for a while, and then, after it shut off, the familiar _tap-tap_ sound of someone knocking the excess water from a toothbrush after rinsing it.

He came back out and silently went to the other side of the bed, taking a minute to move all the stuff that she’d dumped out of the trash bag, and then sat down heavily, making the mattress dip and jiggle. He pushed his sweatpants off before swinging his legs up onto the bed, leaving his boxer briefs and T-shirt on. He pushed the covers down to get in, and she put her legs in too, leaning to put the empty drink-cup on the bedside table. She slid back down in the bed, staying on her side, faced away from him, and he pulled the covers up around them both.

She felt him slide over, his body right next to hers, spooning her, her butt in the thin Hanes underpants slotted right into his crotch, their legs fitted together like parallel zig-zags. His flesh arm came around her body so that his hand was on her, just below her breasts, holding her to him, mindful now to always to move himself rather than pulling on her, so that he wouldn’t hurt her. He was nestling his face into the bare skin on the back of her neck, where her hair had fallen aside.

She relaxed into him finally— the warmth of his body so close to hers, the feeling of his breath on her skin— the relief so intense that she bit her lip to keep from crying again. There’d been too much crying, too much hurting, when all she wanted to do was love him. Her hand came up to cover his, where it was resting above her abdomen, and she squeezed it, an answer to him, if the way he was touching her was an apology for his part of it, and he nuzzled his face into the back of her neck and sighed.

“Where did you go?” she whispered. “Your arm… I was so worried.”

“Just drove around,” he said. “Couldn’t go anywhere, not with my arm. Was gonna get gas once it got dark, keep drivin’, but the stations are lit up, no cover. Didn’t wanna run outa gas, so I came back.”

He was running his lips over the back of her neck in between speaking, just a soft touch, like he was enjoying the sensation of her skin on his mouth without actually kissing her yet.

“Is that the only reason you came back? Because of the gas?”

“No, sweetheart. Course not. Maybe just made it easier ‘cause I couldn’t delay it any more. Wasn’t lookin’ forward to walkin’ back in here, seein’ what I’d done…”

She wanted to turn around, see him, look at him while they did this, but she didn’t want to spook him now that he was talking… but then it was she who couldn’t stop, the words spilling out, giving him all the thoughts she’d swirled through when she was doing her nails.

“What I said before… or the way I said it. I want you to know, that’s not how I see you,” she started, and he was quiet, letting her say it. “I was just— it was just a thing I was noticing. I wasn’t saying it’s who you are, who I think you are, at all. I don’t need you to be, want you to— I’m not expecting you to be anything. Not unless that’s what _you_ want.”

She took another deep breath, and felt his hand ride it, where it was resting above her belly. “I don’t— I’m not Steve,” she said. “I don’t know anything about the guy from before, not really. I only know about _this_ guy, the one I met a couple weeks ago. That’s the Bucky I care about. _My_ Bucky. And if he’s got some overlap with that other guy, well, that doesn’t mean anything to me. Not like it would to Steve. I’m not sitting here waiting for it, looking for it. I want you how you are. _Who_ you are. Right now.”

She did turn around then— she couldn’t help it— pressing her lips together, trying not to show the discomfort in the movement, the covers falling away to their waists as they rearranged their arms, and then he was right there, their faces just a few inches apart, and her eyes did start to sting as she touched his face with her hand, his grey-blue eyes watching her, quiet, intelligent, and she was so glad that he was letting her, that he wasn’t guarding himself from her touch as he had in the bathroom.

He looked different with the short hair— younger, less edgy— but it was just _him_. Not Bucky Barnes, the man from the book. That young man hadn’t seen all the things, felt all the things her Bucky had. So many of them awful. And if she could wave a magic wand and take all of that away, send him back in time to his former self, even if that meant never knowing him, she would— because he deserved that.

But what he’d said before, back during the walk in the woods: that he wasn’t that guy anymore… she believed it was true, even if Steve couldn’t accept it, not yet.

Those mannerisms that were so jarring to Steve— the scenery— the stuff that was still deep inside, coming out more now… They were misleading, in a way— not as important as they would seem to someone lost at sea, looking for any flicker of land; but more like the shades of an accent that you never truly shed, in the struggle to adapt to a new home…

But she could understand why Steve needed to grab onto them like a life-line, whenever they appeared… proof that the man he’d loved was still there— not lost in a ravine, left for dead, but alive— present… waiting to be found…

She felt glad she’d never known him before, because there was nothing to cloud her perception— no reason to doubt what she felt for the man he was now: the man she was falling in love with… was in love with… already there.

“M’sorry I worried you,” he said, so quietly, their faces so close that they had to speak in hushed tones. “Didn’t want to do that. I just needed to be alone, to think. Figure it out. M’sorry about the mirror.”

“Did you?” she asked, barely above a whisper. She was tracing lines on his face, her eyes roving over all of its planes and angles, memorizing every line, every shade, every pore. “Did you figure it out?”

“I think so,” he said, and he shut his eyes again, leaning into her touch.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

He stilled her hand with his, brought her fingers to his lips so that he could kiss them. “Not right now,” he said. “Just wanna be here, with you, like this.”

She moved her body in a little closer, in answer, slotting her knee between his legs and moving her hands to his chest, feeling his lean muscles through the shirt. She realized that they’d never put the plastic back on, after his last shower, and the feel of his unfettered shape beneath her hands, even through the fabric, filled her with a need for more. She wanted to mold herself to him, wrap her limbs around him like a jellyfish, roll them over and love him with her body, but it wasn’t a possibility yet, moving herself against him freely, the way she longed to. The limit to what they could do was a kind of exquisite torture.

He kissed her then, his breath warm but minty, his hand on her face, thumb moving on her cheek, and there was so much tenderness in it that she ached. He pulled his lips away just far enough to murmur, “I can taste that chocolate,” with a little smile, before moving back in for more, and she melted into him— his mouth, his tongue, the feel of him, the flavor.

The thigh she’d pushed between his legs moved up until it was resting against the heat of his body, and she could feel the shape of him, soft and hard, and he let out a vocalized breath, right against her lips, as she moved against him with her leg, testing the boundaries, going a little further, as much as she could without shifting the rest of her body.

His hand dragged down her cheek, over her jaw, her neck, her collarbone, to the fullness of her breast, pressing it from the side through the shirt, rubbing over its center with his thumb, making her breath quicken… and then down to her abdomen, pausing to stroke her there softly before moving lower, under the covers, reaching down to her own heat, cupping her there, between her legs, pressing her through the thin fabric, and she breathed out his name on a whisper… “ _Bucky_ ,”… and she knew that he heard it the way she meant it… not the man from before, not the man in the book, but the man he was right now, _hers_.

He was kissing down her neck, and his hand kept moving, traveling up her body, back to her breast, mapping the shape of it through the fabric of her shirt, her own transitions from soft to hard, circling his thumb, and then he shifted down and put his mouth there, his hand still cupping the curve of her, his lips wet on the fabric as he kissed and pulled on her nipple through the thin shirt…

She moaned with it, ignoring the pain with each inhalation, wanting more, electricity flooding her core, and she whispered, “ _God, I want you_ …,” wanting to rip the shirt off and bare her skin to him, but it was like saying it out loud was a reminder of what they shouldn’t do, and he pulled away before it could go any further, rolling onto his back.

“Me too, sweetheart,” he said, when he could speak.

She stayed on her side, the position more comfortable for her ribs, and tried to steady her breathing as she let out a sad chuckle and admitted, unable to look at him as she said it, “I almost bought condoms today. I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t, because I’d be busting those out right now, even if it put me in the fucking hospital.”

It took him a moment to figure out what she meant, the word maybe unfamiliar, but then he seemed to laugh, in the same awkward, breathy way that she had, and he said, “Sweetheart, you don’t gotta worry about none of that.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, looking at his face now, which was in profile as he stared up at the ceiling. _Please don’t say you’re abstinent; please don’t say you’re abstinent; please don’t say you’re abstinent_ …

“Hydra… took care of that,” he said, and his voice was so neutral, that she didn’t think he could possibly mean what he seemed to be implying.

“What do you mean, they took care of it?”

“They— you know, they made it so I can’t…” He didn’t finish, but he didn’t need to— she already had plenty of evidence that his body worked, so that could only mean…

She pushed herself up a little, in spite of the discomfort, so that she could see him better, make sure there was no misunderstanding. “Are you saying they sterilized you? Forcibly?”

She was frowning, upset by how casual he was being about such a heavy topic. At least it was taking care of that unresolved desire: any sexy feelings had plunged not just to the ground floor, but more like the sub-basement as the anger began to leak into her body like acid.

“Guess so,” he said. “First time was early on, if I’m rememberin’ straight…” He sighed. “But the serum kept repairin’ me or somethin’, so they had to keep cuttin’ me, rippin’ stuff out until they got it right.”

She was trying very hard to remain calm. “But why— what was the— why would they need you to be…” She didn’t even want to say it out loud. Didn’t want to think about why that might be important.

As if he sensed where her thoughts were going, he said, “Wasn’t nothin’ nefarious about it— it was just…well, at first, I think it was when they were doin’ a lot of different things to break me… you know, when I was still fightin’ it, still thinkin’ maybe I could escape…”

“They were tryin’ to impress upon me that there wasn’t gonna be any goin’ back… that I was theirs… just a tool… not a… not a real person anymore. And later… I think they were just irritated that they couldn’t get it to stick. They saw it as a kind of…defiance. They couldn’t let me win.” He made a scoffing sound. “Not like I had any control over it; they're the ones made me that way...”

He made another rueful chuckling sound. “I think they woulda just chopped my nuts off altogether, if they’d’a been sure I’d still be a good killer. I’d hear the docs jokin’, sayin’ they should just geld me and be done with it. I guess they didn’t know if the serum would keep me strong without ‘em…”

“Anyway, they musta finally got it right…”

“Jesus Christ,” she said, almost shaking with anger, and he looked over, surprised by her emotion.

“Hey, hey… sweetheart, it’s okay,” he said, rolling back onto his side, pushing up to support his weight on his metal arm.

“It’s so totally _not_ okay,” she said, blinking back angry tears. “None of what you just told me is even remotely _okay_.”

His eyebrows pinched together in concern. “Is that some kinda… what does Sam call it, a— a deal-breaker for you or somethin’?”

“What? No! That’s not what this is about at all! I’m just fucking pissed off beyond belief that they would do that to you. _Jesus_. I feel like I’m gonna be sick.”

“Hey, no,” he said, pushing his hand into the hair behind her ear, and then moving it down the slope of her neck to her shoulder, rubbing it with his thumb. “Don’t get upset on my account. I ain’t even angry about it no more. That— that kinda life ain’t possible for me anyway.”

“Well, _I’m_ angry about it, and I’m gonna _stay_ angry about it,” she said, exhaling loudly. “And anyway, what do you even mean, it’s not possible for you— you mean, like, having a family? Any family?”

“You really see me takin’ a kid to a ball game with this thing?” he asked, lifting his metal hand from where it was resting on the bed, turning it palm up and then over again, before setting it back down.

“I think you can do whatever you want to do,” she said, too angry to care that she sounded vaguely like some kind of shitty self-help book. “Maybe stretch your definition of whatever it is, if it’s something that seems impossible. Having a family doesn’t have to mean picnics and baseball and all that shit, you know. Or kids even. And anyway, yeah, I think you could go to a baseball game with a prosthesis. Maybe not that one, because, you know, it sorta outs you to your enemies… but I mean some day, if you had a new arm, and a new life, I mean, why the hell not? Why do you want to put limits on it?”

“Darcy, I nearly pulled your goddamn arm out of your body. You think I’d trust myself around a kid?”

“How did this even become about actual kids?” she said, her voice rising again. “I’m not saying you gotta have kids, or should even want kids. I’m just saying—”

She sighed loudly, frustrated, and then realized all at once that maybe the reason he was so defensive about it, while also writing it off as no big deal, was because he _had_ wanted a family, before, and he didn’t think it was possible anymore… needed to believe that it didn’t matter…

She made a conscious effort to calm down, back off. “Anyway,” she said, “if we’re talking about hurting each other, I’m pretty sure it’s partly my fault we’re even here, in this fucked up situation, but you said you don’t blame me, and I don’t blame you for my shoulder, so how about we stop blaming ourselves for this shit, too.”

He lay back again, letting out a controlled breath through his lips. “I don’t wanna fight. Not with you. Don’t even really know what we’re talkin’ about, anymore.”

She slid over to him, resting her head on the left side of his chest, where the metal transitioned to flesh, and he brought his arm around, careful not to drop its weight against her. They lay there for a while, getting back to some calmer state, and finally she said, “I’m sorry they did that to you.” It was yet another thing they’d stolen, changed in him, without his permission. “I wish I could make them pay.”

“A lot of them did,” he said. “When Steve took SHIELD down. And Pierce is dead…”

“You knew him?” she asked. “Secretary Pierce?”

“He was my last handler,” he said. “He’s the one who ordered the hit on Fury… and Steve.”

“He got off too easy,” she said.

“Yeah, well…”

She gripped him a little tighter, wishing she could show him the way _she_ regarded his body— not even necessarily in a lustful way, but just wanting him to know he was special… that his body was cared for, loved… inviolate in her eyes.

Darcy wasn’t religious, but thinking about what they’d done to him… it made her realize how much she regarded his body— anyone’s body, really… except for their enemies— as something almost sacred. She wanted to wash away the brutality… replace it with something beautiful…

They lay in silence again for a time, the television flickering in the dark room, until Bucky inhaled to say, “What the hell are you watching, anyway?”

She snickered against his chest— it felt good to smile just a little, after so much turmoil. “Los locos del golf,” she said, adopting a deep, round voice for the Spanish, and she could almost feel him smiling at it, and then he took another deep breath, in and out, letting the tension out with the air.

There was another long stretch of silence, and then she said, “One more day.” She realized, when she said it, that it was bittersweet: if they were successful, and Steve helped them go in, they could possibly be back to some kind of safe, civilized situation within forty-eight hours. At the same time, it meant only one more day in this strange, private bubble of reality they’d created, where it was just about them… digging, exploring… defining the edges of something… something she didn’t want to lose… and she didn’t know how returning to their friends would affect it.

“You got a plan?” she said. “For— what will it be, Friday?” She tilted her head a bit, so she could look up at his face without moving her head from his chest. He was staring at the TV screen, high up on the wall.

“I’m workin’ on it,” he said.


	20. Chapter 20

She woke up some time in the night, and before she could even sit up, she heard the reassuring rumble of his voice in the darkness: “M’over here.”

She turned over painfully, and could make out the shape of him, sitting in the chair, next to the gap in the curtains. It looked like he was keeping watch.

“Everything okay?” she asked, blinking, trying to see him in the low light.

“Yeah. Just thinkin’.”

“About Friday?”

“Yeah.” He parted the curtains just an inch, looking out, and then let them fall shut again.

“Anything you wanna share?”

He pushed himself up and came back over to the bed, circling it to get to the other side, and crawled in. Darcy immediately snuggled up next to him, draping her arm and one leg across his body. It felt good to claim him, even if the movement hurt.

“We’re gonna have to go real early,” he said. “Steve’ll show up at least two hours beforehand, and he won’t be alone.”

She frowned, looking up at his face. She could see him better, now that her eyes had adjusted to the darkness. “Do you think we need to worry about him? As a threat?”

“No,” he said, “But—”

“But it’d be stupid not to,” she said, finishing it for him.

His flesh hand came up to rest on top of hers, where it was draped over his body, and he ran his fingertips over the delicate bones on the top of her hand. The light touch was soothing, and made her want to get closer, push her body into his side until they merged.

“What do we have to do today?” she said, speaking into his chest. “Please tell me the answer is ‘nothing’— that we’re just gonna lie here and snuggle.”

“Pretty much,” he said. “But when it gets light out and the stores open up, we oughta go out and buy a couple’a backpacks, figure out what we’re gonna take with us… dump the rest. We need to gas up the truck, too— at least enough to get us to the train station.”

“We’re taking the train in?”

“We’ve kept the truck too long. Be best to leave it here before we head into the city. That’s why we need the backpacks.”

“I don’t think I could handle a backpack, with my stupid ribs,” she said.

“You won’t,” he said. “I’ll carry whatever we take.”

“Won’t a backpack suck for you, too?

“So another duffel bag, then.” He looked down at her and grinned. “Cheap one this time.”

“Maybe we should’ve made the thing for today. I’m starting to feel paranoid, like we’re staying here too long.”

“Yeah, I know.” he said. “And after the stunt I pulled in the bathroom, they’re gonna want to look up your record, try to bill you for it, and it ain’t gonna take ‘em long to figure out you lied to them.”

“I don’t think she really believed me in the first place. She just didn’t care, as long as she had something to put into the blank spots on her screen… I mean, that’s the impression I had, once I thought about it.”

“Right,” he said. “But when they find out we cost them money, they’re gonna be angry. And then your lies are gonna make ‘em more angry. That guy who was checkin’ me out in the office yesterday— you think he got a good enough look to give a description?”

“You’re pretty memorable,” she said. “And he was definitely looking.”

“Didn’t see any cameras in there, but they gotta have some.” He sat up, then: “Dammit, they’re sure to have exterior cameras, for the lot… and I had to go runnin’ outside yesterday, my arm stickin’ out…” She’d slid off of him when he sat up, and made a little noise of protest, and he looked down and said, “We should go.”

She knew he was right, but the disappointment swept over her anyway— she wanted to delay the inevitable return to anxiety, fatigue, unknowns. “We could go to another motel,” she said. “A shittier one, like Joe’s.”

He turned to give her a questioning look, and she said, “That was the name of the other one— the cheap one.”

“Huh,” he said. “Didn’t notice.” He twisted a little to look down at her, his mouth pulled up in a smirk. “Seem to be losin’ my skills, the more time I spend around you. Almost like I can’t concentrate. Wonder why that would be.” He slid back down next to her, this time mostly on his stomach, his head propped up on his metal hand.

“Um, sorry?” she said, with a deliberately sheepish smile.

He laughed and reached out the index finger of his flesh hand and traced her upper lip with it. “I like it,” he said, softly. “Didn’t even know I could.”

“Could what?” she asked, and she pursed her lips to kiss his fingertip when it paused in the center of her cupid’s bow. He slid his body further down the bed and rested his head on her stomach, where it was covered by her shirt, his flesh arm draped across her hips.

“Let my guard down,” he said. “Though it’s causin’ us some problems now. That was careless, goin’ out with my arm like that. Stupid.”

“That was my fault,” she said, softly. She put her hands in his hair, running her fingers through the short, thick waves he had on top now, and gently dragged her fingernails over his scalp.

“Not your fault,” he said, his voice dropping in contentment. He seemed to enjoy the feel of her fingers in the shorter hair— if he’d been a cat, he would have started purring— and she felt a little hope that he’d find some good in the haircut, after all.

“I lost control,” he said. “That’s on me. And scarin’ you… makin’ you worry… that ain’t right.”

He pushed up her shirt a little, so he could kiss the soft skin on her belly, and as much as she wanted to relax into it, the feel of his warm mouth on her sensitive skin, she still tensed a moment, guarding a bit, self-conscious of her stomach. In spite of what he’d said about being less observant, he picked up on it immediately, thinking she was tensing from pain.

“You okay? Did I hurt you?” He’d stopped what he was doing, and pulled her shirt back down, pushing himself up on his forearm a little so that he could see her.

“No,” she said, answering his second question, and tried to explain so that he’d believe her. “That— God, that seriously feels so nice, and I don’t want you to stop… it’s just— I’m a little weird about my stomach. It’s stupid. Like, I know it’s not my best feature, and—”

“What’re you talkin’ about?” he said. He seemed genuinely confused.

“Like, I know I’m a… _curvy_ girl…” She said ‘curvy’ as though it had air quotes.

“I’m still not followin’ you,” he said.

“Um…” She didn’t know how to explain it to him, without sounding like she was fishing for a compliment.

“Hold up a sec,” he said, finally getting it. “Doll— are you tellin’ me you’re under the impression that your curves…” He stopped, like he didn’t even want to say it. “You’re sayin’ they’re a _bad_ thing?” He had an incredulous look on his face, and when she didn’t respond, he rolled half onto his back and made a stuttered laughing sound. “Jesus H. Christ. What’s goin’ on with the world…”

She didn’t know what to say. With other boyfriends, she’d often felt the need to almost apologize for not being a stick-figure— to put it out there before things went too far, almost like a disclosure. Not that she’d ever been turned down— in Darcy’s experience, most people were pretty appreciative of any kind of action, but there was nevertheless a feeling, at times, that they were enjoying her body _in spite of_ …

Bucky, for his part, seemed truly dumbfounded, and she wondered if it was because of the time he’d grown up— coming of age when women with more shapely figures were presented as the ideal.

“So…” she said shyly. “Is it safe to say that you… _like_ a curvier woman?”

He rolled to face her again. “M’surprised you had any doubt… guess I’m not doin’ my job right.”

“I mean, I guess I had some clues,” she said playfully.

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

“Well… Steve may have said something, though I wasn’t totally sure what he meant at the time… I thought he was talking about my sassy mouth… ”

He sat up a little, his eyes sparkling with humor. “Yeah? What’d that punk say to you?” He grinned and added, before she could reply, “And I do like your sassy mouth, as long as you’re bringin’ it up…”

“He said that I was…” She hesitated, because it referenced the ‘old’ him, but something told her this would be okay. “He said I woulda been your type… um, before.”

He gave her a frisky close-lipped smile that made his eyes crinkle and then it broke open into something bigger, and he said, “You’d be my type any time, doll,” before biting his lip and giving her a meltingly sexy look, his eyes soft again.

Emboldened, she went on: “I also may have noticed you checking me out in my swimsuit…”

He was flustered for just a split-second and then he recovered, smirking, and said, “The black one, or the polka-dots?”

It surprised her— she didn’t think he’d been paying that much attention— and it took her a moment to come back with, “I dunno, which one did you like better?”

“As long as you’re the one wearin’ it… it don’t much matter,” he said, and slid down the bed again, rucking up her shirt. He went back to kissing her stomach, enthusiastically, and this time she gave into it, closing her eyes and accepting it fully, intoxicated by the knowledge that her body was really doing it for him— that she wasn’t, for him, an _in spite of_ …

He shifted his body over, slotting himself fully between her legs so that his chest was pressed against her pubic bone and his head was resting on her sideways, using her tummy as a pillow. The pressure on her core was making her want to squirm, to pull him up and seat him properly against her, or, alternatively, move him down about a foot, feel his hot breath against her inner thighs…

“I don’t want to go,” she said, pouting. “Wanna stay here and do dirty things with you.”

“Dirty, huh?”

“Filthy.” She sighed and shifted her butt a little under his body, and he lifted off, misinterpreting again, thinking he was too heavy. He rolled onto his back, next to her, his legs dangling off the end of the bed.

After a minute he said, “I don’t think we oughta do anything that…” He trailed off.

“Gets too exciting?” she suggested.

“Don’t wanna hurt you,” he said.

“It’s not that bad,” she said, which was a bit of a fib, but it felt like with each passing hour she was becoming less and less concerned with the pain if she could have some pleasure as the main course.

He breathed out again, loudly, and she couldn’t see his expression— he was too far down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Finally he said, “I just don’t want— I think—” He stopped and then tried again. “I haven’t been with anyone in…” He stopped again, rephrased. “It’s just… it’s been a long time. I want it to be… I don’t want anyone feelin’ any pain, when…”

God, he was going to kill her. If not from sexual frustration, then from fricking sweetness. “When you say a really long time, are we talking 1940s?” When he didn’t say anything, she sort of chuckled and said, “Jeez… that’s, like, no pressure at all— I hope I don’t mess it up.”

He turned over then, so she could see his eyes, and he said, “Sweetheart, there’s no way you could mess it up. Anyone should be worried, it’s me. Probably last all of three seconds…”

“C’mere,” she said. “You’re too far away.” Her heart was pounding, the truth sinking in that he was thinking about it that way too— as a _when_ , and not an _if_ …

He crawled his way back up the bed to her, and she pushed at him gently to make him lie down halfway on his back so that she could tuck back into him. She slid up the side of his body enough to reach his lips with hers, one hand curving around the side of his neck and the line of his jaw, which was already rough with stubble again. She liked how the haircut gave her better access to his skin, the lines of his face, everything open to her, and she almost said it: almost said the three words that she’d been holding onto now for a couple of days, hearing them in her head, both in scary times and sweet ones like this. It was only a matter of time before they spilled out, and she hoped it wouldn’t terrify him when they did.

“How’s your back doing?” she said instead.

“Comin’ along,” he said. “Feels kinda tight.” He hadn’t shown any sign of discomfort, but she noticed that when he reclined like this, he still kept most of his weight on his left side.

“Anything I can do?” she asked. She snuck a hand under the bottom hem of his shirt, and slid it up to feel the contours of his chest, the warmth of his skin, running her fingers through the light scattering of hair over his sternum.

He closed his eyes and said, “You’re already doin’ it.”

They were both quiet for a few minutes, and she felt so relaxed and safe that she almost fell back asleep, but then she opened her eyes and said, “What if we just, like, leave a hundred bucks in the bathroom, with a note that says ‘sorry’ or something…”

He thought about it for a moment. “It’s not a bad idea,” he said. “Might not pursue it, if we did that. Nobody wants a hassle. But I still think we oughta go.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “I know. But where? I almost feel like, at this point, it’s more of a risk to go somewhere new, have to come up with another story, deal with a new set of people, new suspicions. I mean, I guess we could just drive around for twenty-four hours, but that sounds fucking brutal.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I mean, if I was alone… I got lots of options— I know how to live like that— but you… I don’t want that for you.” He stared at the wall opposite the bed, thinking, and finally said, “We still got that baseball cap?”

“Think so.”

He thought about it for another minute and then said, “We’ll go out one time, buy a bag, get some food… then back here and hold tight ’til it’s time to leave. Early morning, before the sun comes up. Couple hours before. Just get up and go.”

He looked down at her, his face asking for her opinion, so she said, “Works for me.” She snuggled further into him, her hand still under his shirt, but did a poor job of hiding her discomfort as she moved.

“When’s the last time you took some pills?”

“Yesterday afternoon, I guess.” she said. “I had some vodka when um… while you were out. Actually helped a little.”

“You want some now? Pills, I mean? Or either one, really. Whatever works.”

“No,” she said. “I think I should give my liver a rest before it tells me to go fuck myself. The ibuprofen doesn’t help that much, anyway. What time is it?”

He turned his head to look at the clock. “Five thirty. Sun’s gonna come up soon.”

“Fuck.” She nestled down into him and shut her eyes. “If we get somewhere safe? Like truly safe, after tomorrow? The first thing I’m gonna do is sleep for three days.”

<<>>

As tired as she was, she was never really able to get back to sleep, and she knew he hadn’t either— their bodies half-upright against the pillows, his metal arm supporting her against him, while his flesh fingers made idle circles on her arm. It was getting less dark in the room, even with the curtains drawn, and finally she stirred and moved against his side, stretching her aching body as much as she could without hurting herself too much.

“What time is it,” she whispered.

“Almost seven.”

She pushed herself up slowly, reluctantly. Her eyes were heavy, and she felt a psychological scumminess that she knew from experience could only be cured by a shower. Her hair was a mess— she’d meant to have him braid it, but that’d all gone to shit after the haircut.

She did a test of what it would feel like to lift her arm up to her head to wash her hair, but the position it required— a stretch and a twist to get her hand to the upper back of her head— was still too uncomfortable to bear for more than a second.

“What’cha doin’?” he asked, watching her movements.

“Seeing if I could stand a shower. Wash my hair again. I feel so gross.”

“What’s the verdict?”

“Uh, that would be a definite _no_. Maybe I should have you shave it off, as long as we’ve got that trimmer.”

“You better be jokin’.” he said, sitting up. “I’m pretty partial to it, the way it is.” He was slightly behind her, and he pulled the bulk of her hair back, behind her shoulders. “You want me to wash it for you again?”

“Really?” she asked.

“I’ll admit, it’s a tough job,” he said, solemnly, and he moved his body up so that he was right behind her, his face inches away from hers when she turned her head. “Looks like I’m the only one here, though,” he said softly, and kissed her once, like a punctuation mark, “so I guess I gotta…” He kissed her again, trying to deepen it, but she blocked him, almost giggling, with a hand over her mouth.

“I’ve got morning breath.”

“Doll, I don’t even care,” he said, and tried to peel her hand away, but she escaped him, sliding away and out of the bed before he could work his voodoo on her.

“Just give me a minute, okay?” she said, and shuffled into the bathroom, pulling the door shut partway. The towels from the night before were still laid out on the floor, and the empty wall where the mirror used to be was a sad reminder of the storm that had ripped through him the evening before.

She used the toilet, gave her teeth a quick brushing, and then started the water in the shower. When it was nice and warm, she went to remove her shirt and then hesitated… she didn’t want to just spring her naked body on him, but she didn’t want to do the towel thing again either. She wound up stepping in with her shirt and underpants still on, figuring she could wash the clothes at the same time, and drew the shower curtain shut.

Even with clothes on, the water felt wonderful, and she moved and turned a few times to get everything warm and wet. She shut her eyes and let the spray wash her face, tipping it back, and resisted the instinct to lift her arms and slick her hair back.

A minute later, she heard a knock on the half-open door, and she called out, “Come on in, handsome.”

She could see the dark shape of him through the translucent curtain as he came in, heard the clank of the toilet seat as he lifted it up to pee. He put the lid down instead of flushing— she smiled at that little courtesy, that he’d even think of the flush affecting the water temperature— and then he drew back the curtain at the rear of the tub to get in behind her. She moved up, a little closer to the shower head, to make room for him, and heard him grab the shampoo from the shelf behind her. When he moved in closer to wash her hair, she felt something brush against her body, and she twisted her head back a little, trying to see him, unable to hide the surprise in her voice:

“Are you, uh, in your birthday suit back there, Sarge?”

“Maybe,” he said, a little mischief in his voice. He rubbed his flesh fingers into her scalp, lathering up the shampoo on her head. His metal hand rested lightly on her left shoulder, keeping her steady. “That okay? Figured I might as well clean up too, s’long as I’m in here.”

“Sure, but…”

“But what?” He was so relaxed, calm, cleaning her hair, like it was no biggie that he was standing behind her, totally buck-ass naked, when it was pretty clear that she was desperate to jump him, but doing her best to follow his lead and show restraint.

“You trying to torture me or something?” she said, with humor.

“Seein’ me naked is torture?”

“Uh… _yeah_ — if I can’t do anything about it, and you’re acting like it’s no big deal…”

“Why would it be?”

“Oh really. Okay, then.” Before she could change her mind, she reached down to grab the hem of her soaked shirt and peeled it off, over her head, ignoring the sharp dig of pain in her ribs. She felt him step back as she moved, and then she swiftly pushed her underpants off and shoved the wet clothes aside with her foot, so they wouldn’t block the drain. She still had her back to him, and she breathed, waiting, the water running down her bare skin, the rivers of it tracing her shape.

His hands had fallen away from her when he’d stepped back, and the only sound for a moment was the hiss of the water running through the pipes and out of the shower head, the spray dancing off the softness of her body. Bucky was totally silent, seemingly disengaged, and she was second-guessing herself, worried she’d somehow misread, on the edge of embarrassment, when—

“Jesus, doll.”

She pressed her lips together, holding back a smile, loving the stunned note to his voice, the knowledge that she’d had an effect on him. She felt like he’d thrown down the gauntlet with his no-big-deal bullshit, or maybe he truly hadn’t thought it was— either way, she’d shown him the error of his ways.

Now that she’d done it, and he wasn’t horrified or anything, she forged ahead: “Gimme the soap,” she said. “Wanna wash my stinky body.”

She held her left hand out to the side, palm up, and felt him place the bar of soap into it. She lathered it up in her hands a bit, and then took her time, keeping her back to him as she rubbed the slick bubbles over her body, front and back, ending with the curves of her butt, and finally down to clean the patch of dark brown hair between her legs.

Again: “Jesus.”

“You just gonna stand there, or are you gonna finish washing my hair?” she teased, handing the soap back to him.

“Sorry, I—” He didn’t finish the sentence, but she felt him come up close behind her again, returning his fingers to her hair, resuming the job with care. He used the same hand to sluice the soapy water through and down as she tipped her head back slightly, eyes shut, her forearms pressing against her breasts while he supported her back with the metal hand. She could feel the suds running down her spine to the curve of her ass, reaching the little dimple she had at the top of her crack.

He rinsed her hair again, and as his fingers made their way down the long dark strands and off the ends, his hand shifted to her skin, and then the metal one joined it, both of them running down the smooth planes of her back on either side of her spine, her skin slick from the soapy water. Getting bolder, they smoothed their way around the dip of her waist, encircling her, like a spooned embrace, his hands caressing her bare stomach, fingers just grazing the top edge of her pubic hair— sending a jolt of longing to her core, and she heard him breathe out a sigh. She found herself turning then, coming around to face him— revealing herself slowly, their bodies only inches apart.

Her arms were still pressed against her breasts—one last concealment— but she rotated her palms out to rest against his muscled chest, trailing her fingers down his warm, wet skin. She could feel the hardness of his body, trapped between them, brushing against her with every slight move she made, and he shuddered another breath in and out as she looked up at him through her eyelashes, slowly.

“No big deal…” she said, softly.

His eyes were moving up and down her body, tracing the curves that formed her hourglass shape, his breathing picking up, wordless, water dripping off his chin, and she released her hands from between them to slide farther down his chest, nothing hidden now, her fingers dragging parallel lines down the sides of his abs. He shifted his weight as her hands neared his hips, and when she moved around to the curve of his ass, she pulled him in closer, feeling him twitch against her as she pressed her own body into him, nothing left between.

He shut his eyes a moment, breathing through parted lips, and then moved his hands to her face, tipping it up so he could lean down and take her with his mouth, breathing into her, their faces wet, the air warm and thick and steamy around them, their skin pressing and sliding together. As he deepened the kiss, his flesh hand moved down the center of her neck and then over to the fullness of her breast, feeling her shape, exhaling as his thumb ran over its hardening center…

“God,” she said, trembling, eyes shut, feeling the press of his body against her, how ready he was… “Can’t we just— if we’re careful…”

“Don’t know if I could be careful right now,” he said roughly, and she whimpered then, breaking, and reached down between them, boldly wrapping her hand around him, pulling a gasp and a groan from his open mouth as she began to move her hand on him.

His metal arm reached out to the side, pressing against the wall as he sagged forward, and she thought he was going push her back with his flesh hand, where it lay against her chest, but instead it ran down the side of her body to her hip, grabbing on, squeezing a little, and she understood it to mean he was on board with what she was doing, her hand slow but steady, soapy and slick…

His head was dipping down, eyes shut, every part of him responding, his breath picking up more, shuddering, as she found the pace that drew his voice out, her own eyes falling shut as her breathing synced up with his.

It was a kind of deliverance, being able to touch him so intimately, to make him feel this good… to pull the noises from him that she was feeling too, and she forgot her own body completely as her efforts focused solely on him, taking care of his body, his heart… loving him.

He’d been so close before she’d even started that it didn’t take long, and she was right there with him, her lips open, pulling in air as the corners of her mouth ticked up a couple of times, unable to hold back the pleasure she felt as she gasped along with him, as though it were her own peak she was chasing.

She could hear the steady climb of his breathing, feel it in his body, tightening, hear it in his voice that was coming through on every shuddered exhale, louder, relentless, until she finally got him there and he let go, with a surge and a shout, his metal palm slamming hard into the wall next to her, denting it, his eyes pinched shut as his mouth battled between the need for more air and a sort of stunned and sated smile… He was spent and panting, the water dripping off his face, as she gently released him...

She’d moved back in close, pressing open-mouthed kisses to his body— across his chest, to the rope of scar tissue along the seam of metal— feeling drunk and lost in wanting to treasure him, give him everything, as he slowed down, his eyes still shut, his body leaning, almost teetering, heavy in a humid dream.

He was trying to speak, moving his lips, but no words came out, and finally he dipped his head down instead, claiming her full lips with a different kind of heat than she’d felt from him before, lacking some holdout of reserve that he’d apparently been hanging onto.

She was almost shaky, hazy and wrung from the heat and the steam, and the overwhelming swell of feelings for him, and she wanted more than anything to just lie down and hold him.

“Gimme the soap,” she mumbled, when he’d released her mouth, and he leaned slightly to grab it, shaky himself, and handed it to her. She lathered it up and then slowly, reverently, ran her soapy hands across his body, starting with the flesh parts of his chest and arm, to the lean muscles of his abdomen, around his hips, and then finally his groin, lingering to clean the dark hair there.

His eyes were still shut, his body swaying slightly from her touch as he let her take care of him, and he spoke, finally, a lazy smile on his lips: “You better be careful what you do, doll. Gonna get me all worked up again.”

She wouldn’t object to that, but they had errands to do before they could collapse again, so she had mercy on him, and on her ribs, and released him, leaning forward to kiss him lovingly right in the center of his chest. She switched gears then, saying, quietly, “Do you need to clean your back? When did you take off the plastic, anyway?”

“Uh… before you cut my hair… yesterday,” he said, finally blinking his eyes open.

“I didn’t realize at the time,” she said. “I would’ve wrapped you.”

“S’okay,” he said. “Think it’s okay to leave it alone. Feels like it is. Don’t hurt so much anymore.” His voice was still slow, sleepy, and the way he was looking at her made her feel like she might melt, right there in the shower.

“Let me see.” She used her hands to encourage him to turn around, and he let her move him so that he was facing away. As before, she sucked in her breath when she took in the impressive evolution of his healing wound. The changes continued to be dramatic: almost all of the areas that’d been exposed muscle before were now sealed over with some kind of translucent tissue, almost like the silver-skin on a raw chicken breast, but thicker, more substantial.

She felt a twinge of unease about the way she'd touched him so impulsively, considering his back still looked like a diagram in an anatomy textbook… not that he seemed to have minded. It was just hard to tell how affected he was by pain— he was so dismissive of his injuries, that it was easy to forget they existed. It still seemed insane to leave it open, though, even for a super-soldier.

“You really don’t want to wrap it?” she asked. “I think we should, even if it’s hurting less.” She couldn’t stop touching him, was running her hands up and down his sides, his hips, wanting to hold him…

He turned his head sideways and nodded, conceding. “Sure, doll. You can wrap it. Now let’s get out of here before we both fall over.”

He maneuvered around her, switching places so that he could quickly rinse himself off, and then reached down to shut off the water. With the sudden loss of the spray— the sound and feel of it— she felt a twinge of self-consciousness sneaking back in; she moved her forearms back up against her breasts in a defensive pose, her hair dripping all around her. She felt like a wet cat— bedraggled, undignified.

Bucky, for his part, was completely unabashed, stepping out of the tub in all his naked glory, and reached down to the shelf under the counter to grab a couple of fresh towels. He turned back to where she was still standing, dripping in the tub, and said, “C’mere sweetheart; let me help you get out.”

He held out his metal arm, almost like a dance partner, and she grabbed onto it, using it to keep herself steady as she stepped over the edge of the tub and onto the towels on the floor. She felt clumsy and unattractive, but there was nothing but affection in his eyes as he moved in close to her and wrapped a big white towel around her body, using the corners of it to dab at the water drops still clinging to her face.

It was like he could read her mind, because he said, “You got no idea how beautiful you are, do you.”

She tipped her head down a bit, the intensity of his gaze making her feel shy. He kissed her forehead, his lips soft and warm, and then he stepped back, grabbing the other towel, and dried himself off, his eyes still watching her.

He hung up the towel when he was done and she followed, still wrapped up in hers, watching as he moved through the room… He was completely at ease with his body for the moment— skin and metal and ravaged flesh alike— and all she could think was, _You’re the beautiful one, Mister_.

<<>>

Once she’d gotten dressed, taken a hefty dose of ibuprofen, and wrapped up Bucky’s back again, she went back to the bathroom to hand-wash some clothes. All of it hurt, but she hated feeling useless, and told herself that she needed to keep moving and breathing, in spite of the pain. She washed her underpants and bra in the sink with some shampoo and then hung them up to dry— if things turned sour on Friday, she’d want to have a change of clothes ready for the days ahead.

She could hear Bucky watching the news on TV while she worked, and when she exited the bathroom, he said, “They had a short thing about the robbery.” He looked over at her. “They think the dancers did it.”

“Aw, shit,” said Darcy.

“Don’t worry,” said Bucky, understanding her concern. “Nothin’ bad’ll happen to them. Those guys were so messed up, no way they’re gonna be reliable witnesses. And anyway, there ain’t gonna be no evidence against the ladies. They’ll get hassled a little, but then it’ll blow over.”

“I guess,” she said, but it still made her feel bad.

“You should call the office,” he said, and it was a good distraction; she phoned the front desk, and then made a quick trip to the office by herself to pay for it. The same young man was working the desk— alone this time— and he was open and friendly, just like the day before.

She handed over the cash, and while he was counting it, he asked, “You guys need any fresh towels or anything?”

They probably did, since most of them were on the bathroom floor, but she said, “No thanks,” anyway, smiling politely, and then, “We’re good.” She headed over to the coffeepot to pour a couple of to-go cups. While she was fitting the plastic lids on them, she said, “Hey, do you know if there’s a Target around here?”

“Sure,” he said. “It’s in the Galleria, downtown.”

“Oh,” she said. “Is that real busy? I get kind of overwhelmed in crowds, super-busy city parking, that sort of thing.”

“Well,” he said, thinking about it, “Depending on what you’re looking for, there’s also Kmart, right past the library. Would that work?”

“That’s perfect,” she said, and grabbed the two coffee cups. “Thanks so much.”

“No problem,” he said, smiling. “You guys have a nice day.”

Back at the door to the room, she balanced the coffee cups one on top of the other while she put in the key-card, but she couldn’t muster the leverage to push the door in, and Bucky jumped up from the bed to open it the rest of the way for her.

“There’s a Kmart, just past the library,” she said, handing him one of the coffee cups.

“Is that like Walmart?”

“Smaller,” she said. “But they should have duffel bags.”

<<>>

“I really, really want this one,” she said. They were in the sports and outdoor section of Kmart, and she was holding up a twenty-inch duffel bag that had a purple, turquoise, and pink Aztec print, lavender straps, and a giant, purple all-caps ‘ _FIERCE_ ’ emblazoned across the side. All for the low, low price of eleven ninety-nine.

“You know the idea is to be inconspicuous, right?” said Bucky, his face full of amusement. He had on his long-sleeved shirt, his work gloves, and the ball cap, but she could still see his face, and it was giving her all the happy feels. Their activities in the shower seemed to have shaved a layer of anxiety off of him, and she was resolved to give him a repeat of that treatment as soon as possible. Happy, relaxed Bucky was like some kind of gift... made her feel peaceful in a way she'd never quite felt before...

She pretended to pout about it, but they wound up going for the plain black duffel bag, which was fifty cents more, like a tax for being boring. They made one more stop in the store— hair ties for her— and then they were back to the 4Runner and done with their only errand for the day, other than getting gas for the truck, and another trip through the Burger King drive-thru.

“I wish we could get a pizza or something,” she said, when they were finally in the short line of cars to get their crappy food. “My body is going to get revenge on me for all this junk we’re eating. It’s only a matter of time.”

“I should get you some real pizza, in Brooklyn,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Sure— Stevie and me used to go get a slice over at…” He trailed off and then said, “Probably not there anymore.”

“Might be,” she said. “I mean, I’m no expert on New York, but it seems like there’s a lot of old restaurants and stands that have been around forever. I mean, it’s worth a look, right?”

“Sure,” he said, but it seemed like the wind had been knocked out of his sails a bit. She couldn’t tell what was going on with him— he’d gone from violent denial of his past just the day before, to this— wanting to get a slice of pizza in his old neighborhood. She wondered if he’d been thinking about Brooklyn the night before, when he’d stayed up sitting by the curtains. She wondered how much he actually remembered. Seemed like more than he’d let on before, or maybe more than he’d wanted to admit to himself.

When it was their turn to order in the drive-thru, she went for the veggie-burger this time, and a garden salad on the side, praying to the fast-food gods that she wouldn’t get food poisoning from the salad. Bucky got his usual mega-calorie meal, and they took the food back to the motel, to eat in peace in the room.

“You nervous about tomorrow?” she asked around a mouthful of food.

He finished up a bunch of fries and swallowed, and said, “Sorta. But not about the meet part. More about what comes after. If we go in.”

“How come? I was sorta thinking if all goes well, it’ll seem easy, compared to the past few days. I mean, at the very least, we won’t have the stress of ‘what next’ hanging over us.”

“Well, that’s just it,” he said. “It _is_ a ‘what’s next’… only in a bigger way.” He was working on a burger now, and she waited for him to chew and swallow, so he could continue his thought. “Back when Steve brought me in, introduced me to Sam… took me to the Tower… it sorta felt like a foregone conclusion that they’d get me fixed up, sorted out, and then I’d be joinin’ up. Doin’ what they do.”

“And you don’t want that?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Not anymore. But I don’t know if I know how to be anything else. Even before… I mean, before Hydra got me. Army trained me to be a sniper. I was good at it. Real good. That’s what I know how to do. S’what I’m built for.”

She shrugged. “Doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it. I’m really good at data-entry, but that doesn’t make it my life’s work or anything. I mean, you can always learn something new.” She took a drink of the motel coffee, which was almost cold now, making her grimace. “Like, you could become a fireman or something.”

He snickered at that, but she pressed on. “Oh my God, you’d be like, the best fireman. Holy shit. Ladies would be setting their own apartments on fire just to get a house call.” She giggled when he shook his head at her.

“Seriously, though,” she said, “it’s not like there’s some ticking time-bomb waiting to go off if you don’t decide _right now_ , you know? You have time. Don’t worry so much about it.” She took another sip of the bad coffee.

“When I first signed on with Jane? I was _this_ close to getting my degree in poli-sci—” He looked at her questioningly and she explained, “Political science— I know, totally doesn’t seem like me, right? I think I only picked it because I felt like I had to pull the trigger on _something_ , and I didn’t totally suck at it, so… But once I’d been working with Jane for a while, I realized I didn’t even want to finish the degree, even though I had good grades and all.”

She paused and took the lid off her salad. “And then Thor happened, and we got all tangled up with SHIELD… Now I feel like I just wasted all that time, when I could have been working toward something else. But that’s stupid. I can still do something else, right? It’s not like picking the wrong thing disqualifies you from life.”

“So what’s stoppin’ you?” he said.

“Well for one thing, I need money. That’s why the job with Stark was a no-brainer. And I still don’t even know what I want to do. I don’t even know what I’m good at yet.”

“You’re pretty good at this,” he teased.

“What, talking shit about myself?”

“Cheerin’ up a messed-up old man.”

She looked up at him. “Hey, if there was a paid position for that, I’d have put in my application two weeks ago.” She was picking at her so-called salad, which didn’t look anything like the picture on the menu, and she said, “I don’t know. Once you get on SHIELD’s radar? Even if it’s not really SHIELD anymore? It sort of feels like being in the mafia or something. Like, once you’re in, you’re in for life. Or at least you’re gonna be followed around for life. The whole ‘you know too much’ kind of thing.”

“We could just take off,” he said.

Her eyes shifted to look at him, trying to gauge whether he was joking or not. His face told her that he was completely serious.

“Yeah?” she said softly. “And how would we do that?”

“I’d figure it out.”

She believed he could. “Nice to know it’s an option,” she said.

<<>>

They spent the rest of the day lying in bed, alternately drowsing or lazily entwining their limbs with each other, sleepy from bad food and the haze of what felt like a kind of love-sickness— only the pain in her ribcage was ruining it, making every slight movement uncomfortable. She’d fully intended to get him naked again and resume her exploration of his body— had thought about it the entire time they were shopping— but everything hurt too much… just lying there breathing was bad enough.

In the late afternoon, he got out of bed and started to sort through the Walmart bags, dividing their belongings into things to keep, and things to throw away. “One change of clothes,” he said, putting his own stuff into the bottom of the new duffel bag.

“Already on it,” she said. “I just need something to change into tonight.”

“Okay,” he said, setting the few items aside, and moving the rest of the clothing to the ‘toss’ pile. He added a few bottles of water to the duffel bag, along with all of the remaining protein bars, the canister of wet-wipes, the Saran wrap, and the rest of their cash.

“Don’t forget to keep out the money for the mirror,” she reminded him.

He went back into the stash, pulling out two fifties. “What are we forgetting?” he asked, looking around the room.

“We still gotta take your long-sleeved shirt, and your gloves,” she said. “And the cap maybe?” She was sitting up in the bed now, scanning the room herself, thinking. “We’re bringing the toothbrushes and toothpaste,” she said. “There’s some other stuff in the bathroom.” Her eyes landed on the desk. “I’m keeping the nail polish.”

He looked at her with a little smile, and again she had the urge to tackle him, push him down, destroy him with love… but she couldn’t do any of that, so she just smiled back, hoping he could read it all in her eyes instead.

“Is that it?” she asked. “I’ll pack the vodka and ibuprofen later. I think everything else can go. Don’t throw out my cereal though— I might have more of it tonight.”

“All right,” he said. He pushed himself up, went over to the desk, pulled a pen and a little square pad of motel stationary out of the drawer. “Here,” he said, handing it to her. “Write the note. When we wake up, middle of the night, we can just get up and go.” He was gathering up all the stuff to throw away, putting it all into one of the large trash bags, and he set it, still open, by the bathroom door, next to the one that had the broken glass in it.

Darcy held the pen over the notepad a moment, thinking, and then leaned over on the bed to write. She kept it short, and to the point: “ _Sorry about the mirror_.” She ripped it off the pad, and handed it to Bucky.

“Maybe we should stick the money in an envelope, leave it at the front desk,” she said. “Otherwise housekeeping will probably just take the cash for themselves, right? I mean, who wouldn’t? Nobody would ever know…”

“Can’t risk it,” he said. “Sides, we don’t even have an envelope or nothin’.” He sighed. “Didn’t even occur to me that someone’d pocket the cash for themselves. Don’t know what’s goin’ on with my head… m’not thinkin’ straight.”

“So do we leave the cash, or not?” she asked.

“I think it’s worth a try,” he said. “Maybe there’s still some honest people in the world…” He took the note, along with the two fifties, into the bathroom.

“You want these clothes hangin’ up?” he called.

“Yeah,” she called back. “Those’re my one change of under-stuff. Are they dry yet?”

“Close enough,” he said, and brought them back out, added them to the duffel bag. He tossed the rest of his razors and the shaving cream into the trash. “What about the hair trimmer?”

She hesitated— it was a decent piece of brand-new equipment, and it felt incredibly wasteful to just throw it out, but it was just extra weight, and they didn’t need it. “Toss it,” she said. She was picking at her cuticles, wrecking the nail polish on her thumb. “I’m starting to get anxious,” she said. “Like before you go on a big trip. I just want to go now, and get it over with.”

He’d added the clipper kit to the trash and stood up, said, “I know, sweetheart. We should both try to sleep, though. Gonna be a long day tomorrow.”

She leaned back in the bed again, saying, mostly to herself, “Twenty-four hours from now, everything could be totally amazing.” She paused and said, “Or not.”

Bucky turned off the TV, so the light wouldn’t keep them up. “It’ll be okay. No matter what happens. We’ll figure it out.”

She looked up at him, and she said it in her head: _I love you_.

Bucky sat down on the bed, staring into nothing. “I think we’re ready.”


	21. Chapter 21

“Sweetheart…. wake up. Come on, wake up. Time to go.”

He was next to her in the bed, stretched out on his left side, all the covers pushed down. He was stroking her cheek with the curved backs of his fingers, trying to rouse her from the cocoon of slumber.

She was waking up, but she ignored his words, snuggling closer and pushing against him until he surrendered, rolling onto his back again; she reached her left hand to rest against his chest, wishing it were bare skin instead of fabric. They’d slept fully clothed, except for socks and shoes, so that they could just get up and go. Bucky had managed to braid her hair for her, and he playfully tugged on the messy rope of it now. “C’mon, doll.”

“Don’t wanna get up,” she groaned. “Wanna stay in bed with you.”

“Me too, sweetheart. But we gotta go.” He said the words, but he didn’t move either. As he lay there, staring straight ahead, she burrowed into him even more, nestling into the comfort of his body. She wedged her crotch right up against his hip as her left leg, encased in the yoga pants, bent to drape across his legs, capturing him.

Her left hand slid down then, like a sneak-thief from his chest to the top of his sweatpants, and then lower, and he chuckled softly and said, “What’re you doin’,” a smile in the words, but he didn’t stop her. She could feel him, soft through the fabric, and she ran her hand over him, loving the new permission she’d felt since the shower to touch him more freely, though she still made a point to signal her intentions.

She felt his body waking up, and she moved her own heat against him a little, where she was pressed against his hip. He made a deep, contented noise in his throat, responding to her touch, and then took a full breath, in and out, and said, “You ain’t playin’ fair.”

His words only encouraged her, and she grinned and expanded her efforts, paying attention to his breathing, his mouth opening, his hips shifting up slightly as she stroked him through the sweatpants, until he made a low sound, possessive, almost like a growl, and rolled onto his side again, pushing her arm out of the way, and she giggled, wincing, but it was cut off with a delighted gasp when he reached down with his own hand to cup her between her legs, as if to say, _two can play at that game_ …

She made a little sound of want as he tried to kiss her, his own lips smiling, and then his hand left her body, leaving behind an ache, an emptiness where she wanted more… he'd moved it to her face, caressing her, his thumb against the corner of her mouth as he kissed her heatedly, feral and deep, and then he broke it to breathe, and followed it with a softer one, tender, his hand trailing down her cheek.

She could sense him ending it there, but she grabbed his hand before he could move away, drawing it back down to the heat between her thighs, pressing it there again, shutting her eyes, her lips falling open again, showing him how good it felt… they didn’t even need to move…

But he did move, slowly, exhaling as he outlined her shape up to the ridge of her pubic bone, the softness of her body easily felt through the stretch pants, and she sighed in contentment. He kissed her again as his fingers traced her, stroking her gently through the fabric, and she could stay in that feeling forever— his hand on her body, the tenderness in the touch of his lips, and she smiled under his kisses, her mouth open, feeling happy…

He was paying attention, she knew— watching her for signs of pain— but he let his hand travel back up to her belly and then it dipped under the waistband of her pants, past the soft skin below her navel, seeking her out, his fingers curving down low to brush softly over her center through the paper-thin fabric of her underwear, making her want to move more than she could, to chase the pleasure…

She let her legs fall open a little more, letting him know she welcomed his touch, and the movement pulled a little sound from him, another exhale against her mouth. She made another needy sound of her own, helpless to it, even as she tried to curb her instinct for air, afraid he’d stop if he knew how it hurt her— the little gasps, the tightening in her chest—and she didn’t want him to stop… needed him… She distracted him with her hips, circling slightly, moving her body against his hand, asking for more…

He breathed out again, his eyes shut, and his mouth took her lips again, tasting her with his tongue in the same moment that his fingers found her, moving the underwear aside to touch her, skin-to-skin where she needed him, and her breath hitched, and then with just a few velvety strokes her body opened up to him, warm and wet, and he sagged a little, his breath ragged, pushing his forehead into hers, as his voice whispered, “ _God_ …,” and the sound of him saying it as he touched her, slower now, languid, was dizzying, her body flooding with need, wanting him, and she thought, _we can do this; I can be still enough to do this… please…_

And she whispered it out loud: “ _Please_ …,” and he made his own sound of want, shaky, and she felt the wet heat of his mouth as everything sank in more— his lips, the sweep of his tongue, almost tied to the silky drag of his fingers through her folds, as though the two points of slickness were linked, and her breath hitched again and she said it once more: “ _Please_ …,” as he slid deeper into her heat, pulling her moisture up higher to where she shivered from it as he circled around her, slowly…

And she couldn’t believe how close she was already, just from his touch— from the slide of his fingers below and lips above, and the feel of him loving her, nothing else needed, even as she ached for him to fill her… and she was tensing against it, the pain, though she longed to surrender, completely— still holding onto the breaths that would hurt her, even as her body said _yes_... moving with him as he pulled it from her, roping it in, tightening, exquisite, and she could feel him riding it with her, and she gasped out his name… “ _Bucky_ …” and then it broke apart all at once—

Unable to guard against it, to steel herself, she clenched all through her body, shivering, every muscle coiling and then unfurling in an intense release, the fractures inside ripping like fire through her chest as she cried out… and her eyes were stinging, watering from the shards of pain, but she didn’t care…

And his hand stilled slowly as he exhaled roughly, careful with her, aware of her sensitive body where his fingers still rested, warm upon her as her wave subsided and melted away, and then his hand traveled back up as he kissed her again, with so much feeling, a kind of consummation… spent as if he’d exploded along with her…

And then she opened her eyes to see him watching her…

She couldn’t hide the tears, hanging there unshed, and she hoped he’d see them for what they could be, should be— a surge of emotion, something raw and beautiful— but his face fell as his hand moved to her cheek, holding her as she looked at him, and his concern was as tender as it was painful to see, her eyes searching him, begging him not to mar the moment.

He spoke to her, a whisper: “Did that hurt you? Please, sweetheart, tell me the truth,” and the vulnerability in his eyes brought her own hand to his face, needing to touch him, to communicate everything, not knowing how, but needing to try…

“Bucky, no,” she said, so quietly, “Please, honey, no… don’t do that; don’t make me regret it. It was worth it.”

And he flinched, just the slightest bit, from the truth behind her admission, but she repeated it, pulling him in, demanding it— “It was worth it,” she said again, whispering it, as she kissed him, softly, and again, until he relented, letting her do it. She was able to give him more, then— coming out of the spell, but still cautious, as though the air were fragile: “You didn’t hurt me. You— God, you made me feel so good. My chest— it hurts— but it wasn’t you. I wanted this. Needed it. Please don’t make me wish it back.”

“Sweetheart,” he whispered, and he sank down in the bed so that he was lying fully on his side, and she slid down too, facing him, her ribs reproachful, warning her of the penalties to come, but she didn’t care— it didn’t matter.

He was staring at her, moving his eyes back and forth between hers, imploring her to hear him. “Makin’ you feel good,” he said finally. “I don’t ever want you to wish that back.” He paused a moment. “But how can I—” He breathed out, frustrated. “I can’t enjoy it, knowin’ it hurts for you.” She opened her mouth to speak, but he continued before she had the chance: “But I don’t want you feelin’ like you gotta lie to me. I know you were hurtin’ before, too… from the shower.”

He put his hand back against her cheek, his thumb moving on it. “Sweetheart, I—” He dropped his head for second, breathing out again. “I wanna be with you too. But don’t lie to me. Don’t hide that you’re hurtin’.” He was holding her eyes now, serious. “Promise me.”

She turned her mouth into his hand, shutting her eyes and kissing his palm, putting all of her feelings into it, and then she stayed there, just thinking, her face turned away from him. Part of her wanted to argue— to tell him that it was her body, her decision. But she knew it wasn’t that simple— that being used as a weapon had done something to him that made this more complicated. They’d taken away his choice— dictated whom to hurt, and how and when… and his choice now was to do none of those things. He needed that control.

She also knew, if she was honest with herself, that she’d been consciously deceiving him, knowing it would bother him— her pain— and that she’d been selfish, chasing her own need to be closer, to be more physical with him…

She turned back, saw his eyes still fixed on her, waiting, worried, and she said, “Okay,” softly, and then, “I promise,” making it clear. He let out a breath, like he’d been holding it. “How long?” she said then. “How long does it take? Do you know?”

His hand moved down to her collarbone, traced the line of it to her shoulder and picked up a lock of hair that had fallen out of her braid, curled it in his finger. “What I remember?” he said. “Guys I served with… busted ribs’d take you out…” He hesitated to say it. “Could be four, five weeks. Maybe six.”

That broke through any remaining fog, and her eyes widened, her voice rising from their sanctuary of hushed tones. “Six _weeks_? Six whole fucking weeks? What has it been— three days?” She looked at him incredulously for a moment and then dropped her head to the bed, face down, wincing from the pain of the motion, and then she murmured into the sheets, “There’s no way. I’ll never make it. Six fucking weeks.”

He chuckled then, and ran his hand in a soothing line along her shoulder blade. “Could be less,” he said. “And if we can go back— if Steve has a way for us to be safe…” He stopped, and she turned her head on its side, resting against the bed, so that she could see him.

“What,” she said, pouting.

His eyes were sparkling now, amused by how grumpy she was about it. “Maybe you can get some more of the good pills, like you were takin’ at first. Seemed like those worked pretty well. Better than the other stuff.”

“They did,” she said. “Knocked the pain right down.”

“So then…” He picked up her braid, took off the tie. Separated the sections of hair, and combed his fingers through it, releasing the tension where the braid had pulled on her scalp. “Who knows… we can see how we do, with whatever they got.”

“Yeah?” she said, a little smile sneaking out, her eyelids softening as she gazed at him. “So you’d be willing to… run some trials? For educational purposes?”

“I’ve always taken my education real seriously…”

“Is that so…”

She couldn’t stay grouchy when he was looking at her like that, all flirty and beautiful, and smirking at how she was basically having a tantrum that she couldn’t sex him up _immediately_ , even as her body was still tingling from the pleasure he’d just given her… God, but he made her greedy…

She sighed and said, “C’mere,” and he moved back into her and gave her a kiss, soft and sweet, and when he drew back from it, her eyes were still shut, pulling in her lip to taste him, and she said, “You make me feel good, Bucky Barnes. So many kinds of good. Don’t you dare think otherwise.”

If he had a problem with her using his full name this time, he didn’t show it— he only leaned in again to give her another kiss, longer this time, holding her face with his hand, and she could feel him pour himself into it, blending it with her own offering… all the words yet left unsaid, the feelings shared between them.

<<>>

They brushed their teeth and packed away the toothbrushes, along with the ibuprofen and the vodka, and looked around one more time, making sure they weren’t forgetting anything. He solemnly asked permission to toss out the Froot Loops, breaking into a smile when she pretended to be outraged.

She was sitting in the chair, trying to tie her shoes, but it hurt too much to do all that bending, so Bucky came over, sat down on the edge of the bed, and lifted her feet one at a time into his lap to tie them for her. He was quiet—not saying a word about her decreased range of motion— though she knew it bothered him. He stood and pulled the bedspread up to cover the bed, and she saw the little pink book of poetry fall out and land on the floor.

“Hey, don’t forget your book,” she said, and he bent down to pick it up, and then zipped it into the side pocket of the duffel bag.

It was almost four in the morning when they crept out the door to the dark parking lot, leaving the key card in the room behind them. Bucky unlocked the truck and helped her sit down and settle in, buckling her up, making sure she had the little yellow pillow. He loaded the two bags of trash into the trunk, closed it up, and got in.

“Ready?” He looked at her, his hand on the keys in the ignition, and she nodded, reaching out a thumb to rub at the dark scruff in the dent of his chin, his face shadowy in the unlit interior of the vehicle. She tried to smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. He pressed his lips together, his own eyes tired, and started up the engine.

“Train station’s not too far,” he said. “But we gotta dump the trash and wipe the truck.”

“M’kay,” she said, and then he backed out of the parking spot, exited the lot, and drove them away from the motel.

“You thirsty?” he asked. “You want me to get you something from the drive-thru? Coffee, or… ”

“No,” she said. “It’ll just make me have to pee later, when we’re not… anywhere.”

He was quiet a minute, driving, and then he said, “It’s gonna be okay. I’m gonna get you somewhere you can be safe, one way or another. Stay put for a while. Heal.”

They drove past the library and Kmart, and then continued on into new territory, the road widening to three lanes in each direction, though there was little traffic to fill it. As they were nearing what had to be the downtown, they came to a confusing spiderweb of an intersection— lanes heading off in all directions from a central turnabout— and he confidently steered onto a branch that quickly dumped them onto a narrow, two-lane road that disappeared into the darkness of some kind of municipal park.

The road was flanked on both sides by towering broadleaf trees and areas of open grass— it was probably beautiful in the light of day— but now, in the middle of the night, without any streetlights to guide their way, it felt eerie and forbidden, like they’d entered a restricted area, or a place known by locals to be avoided after dark.

“You sure this is the right way?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Don’t worry. I drove all over here the other night when I was out bein’ an idiot. I know where I’m goin’.”

“Okay,” she said, reassured, and then, “You weren’t being an idiot. You just needed to be alone.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Coulda gone about it better.”

“No one’s perfect,” she said, teasing a little, and then, sighing, said, “though I have to say you come pretty close, Bucky Bear.”

His mouth twitched and he glanced over to her affectionately, and said, “You believe that, you really must be out of your mind.”

“Yeah, and thank God for that,” she said, yawning. “Sanity’s for losers,” and then, “Ow. Even yawning fucking hurts.”

He glanced over at her, and reached to rub his hand on her thigh before he moved it back to rest on the lower loop of the steering wheel. They continued down the dark, spooky road for another few minutes, and finally the green zone seemed to end abruptly as they came to a controlled intersection, with single-family homes visible on the other side. He paused for the red light and then made a right turn, onto a narrower road that took them through more trees, though this route at least had streetlights on it. She felt like they were going nowhere.

“This is seriously the way to the station?”

“Don’t you trust me?” he asked, with humor.

“I do,” she said, and she meant it. “It’s just weird.”

“Nothin’ seems weird to me, no more,” he said. “Don’t know if that’s good or bad…”

“You thought my cereal was weird,” she said.

“I did,” he said, chuckling, and then he schooled his features and said solemnly, “Don't know how people can eat that for breakfast. More like some kinda candy. Not even _good_ candy.” He was teasing her, trying hard not to laugh. “Bad, stale candy—"

“Hey,” she said, smacking his leg with the back of her hand, wincing yet again from the pain of the sudden movement. She followed through anyway: “What’d I tell you about making fun of my treats.”

“You gonna penalize me?” he said, giving her a sexy sideways grin.

“I’m gonna have to come up with a better system,” she said. “I don’t want to have to enforce anything that would penalize me, too.”

He licked his lips and gave her another one of his sensuous smiles, his eyes hooded, and she tried not to laugh, and said, “Oh my God, stop it.”

“What?” he said, feigning innocence. “I’m not doin’ anything.”

“You’re dangerous,” she said. When he chuckled, she said, “Seriously. You’re so sexy, it’s disturbing.”

She wasn’t kidding— it was almost making her wet, just looking at him— his sexy grin, his new, tousled bangs, the shadow of his scruff coming back in… the low rumble of his voice as he teased her... remembering the feeling of his fingers on her… sliding inside as he’d kissed her senseless… _fuck_ … there was no way— _no way_ — she was holding out for _weeks_. She’d knock off a drug store if she had to…

“You okay?” He’d turned his head to look at her, concerned, and she realized she was just staring at him, mouth open…

“Uh, yeah…” She took a careful, deep breath and broke her gaze, looking out the window again. “Just thinking about what I want to do when we get to… wherever…”

“You makin’ a list?”

“Yup,” she said. “It’s pretty simple: eat, sleep… get naked. Not necessarily in that order…”

“Sounds good to me,” he said, biting his lip as he grinned at her, and for a few seconds, as she smiled back, all of the anxiety just melted away.

“Okay, I gotta pay attention for a minute, here,” he said, peering forward again at the road in front of them, the headlights picking out the changing features of the way ahead: they went over a little creek, the tires humming loudly as they went over the grated-steel surface of a low bridge, and then past a fenced-off construction site lined with green porto-potties all in a row, and finally through a little stone-lined tunnel under a railroad bridge. Right: the railroad. They were close.

They drove up a little hill and then they were back to a more regular-looking street, with light industrial and commercial buildings, alternating with long-term parking lots half-filled with cars. They came to a three-way intersection, and Bucky looked both ways, thinking, and then turned right, driving slowly. “There’s a metered lot around here, somewhere,” he said. “That’s what we want.” And then, “Keep your eyes out for a dumpster.”

She looked out the window on her side, scanning the side- and back lots of the properties as they they went by, but didn’t see any dumpsters. “There’s the lot,” he said, pointing to the right. “We’ll come back to it.” The road continued on just past the lot, but it became a one-way in the wrong direction, with red-and-white _Do Not Enter_ signs standing sentry on either side. “The station’s just a block away, that direction,” he said, turning the truck around and heading back past the metered lot. They backtracked to the three-way intersection, and he took the other fork this time.

A block after the turn, she blurted out, “Dumpster,” pointing to a row of beat-up blue metal containers on the other side of a chain-link fence for an industrial lot. He took note of where she was pointing, and then continued up the street a bit, did a three-point turn, and headed back. He pulled over to the curb and scanned the exterior of the property through the windshield; apparently satisfied, he got out, popped the trunk, and pulled out the two trash bags.

The fence around the lot was six feet high and topped with triple strands of barbed wire, but Bucky was undeterred, tossing the bags over, one by one, and then effortlessly scaled the fence, used his metal hand to push down the wire, swung over, and dropped down elegantly to the other side, almost soundlessly for a man his size. He put the bags into separate dumpsters and then was back over the fence just as easily, the entire thing accomplished in less than a minute.

He got back into the truck, brushed his hands off on his sweatpants, and then looked over to see her giving him a sly, assessing look.

“What,” he said, his hand pausing on the gear lever.

“Nothing,” she said playfully, smiling, and then when he kept looking at her, she said, “You got the skills.”

He released the brake, and pulled away from the curb. “Ain’t nothin’ remarkable,” he said, and made a U-turn.

“I’d argue with you, but I’m too tired,” she said, turning to cover a huge yawn.

They drove through the quiet streets for about five minutes, until he indicated the North White Plains railroad station coming up on their left. The platforms for the trains were at ground level, and a large enclosed ticket office perched over the tracks like a spider, with glass-walled-stairwell legs leading up to it in zig-zags on both sides. Just past the station, she realized they were now on the other side of the _Do Not Enter_ signs they’d seen before, near the metered lot.

“Why’d you go all the way around?” she asked.

“Didn’t see any cameras by the dumpsters,” he said, “But can’t be too careful. This way, if they picked me up dumpin’ the trash, they’ll see us drivin’ off in the other direction, away from where we’re gonna leave the truck.”

He drove past the signs, entered the metered lot, and then drove around to pick a spot at the farthest edge from the street. He parked, turned the engine off, and leaned back, dropping the keys into one of the cup holders in the center console; he let out a long exhale, as if he’d been waiting to do it for some time.

“Now what?” she said. She looked at the digital clock on the console: 4:35 a.m. “What time does it open?”

“We don’t gotta wait for the ticket office to open; they got machines. But we should get on the first train of the morning, if we can, before it gets packed with people goin’ into the city.”

“God, right,” she said. It hadn’t even crossed her mind, until that moment, that there would be a hundred thousand people commuting into New York in the morning, from all the outlying areas. It was just a regular workday for them.

He twisted around to the duffel bag in the back, pulled out the canister of wet wipes, and started to wipe down the car: steering wheel, gear lever, console controls, glove box, door handles.

“Don’t forget the knife,” she said, and he stopped and bent over, folding his chest against his legs to reach under the seat, patting around until he found it. He sat up and held it a minute, turning it over in his hand— it was a brutal-looking thing, no pretense, made to harm.

“What happened to the sheath?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “You got it from the trunk. I didn’t see what you did with it. I heard you ripping the packaging. Did it even come with a sheath?”

“I don’t remember,” he said, and then twisted to the back seat again to access the duffel bag. “Probably threw it away with the rest of the trash. Can’t carry it anyway; don’t have a belt or boots or a strap or nothin’.” He wrapped the knife up carefully in a T-shirt and zipped it into the duffel bag.

He looked over at her, noticed she was still holding onto the little yellow pillow. “We should probably toss that.”

“I know,” she said, hugging it. “Just saying goodbye.”

“I think we got rid of everything else we stole,” he said, and she could see him thinking about it.

“What about the cap?” she said, nodding toward his head.

“Gotta hang onto it a little longer,” he said. “I’ll dump it if… well, if things go our way.” He sighed, a heavy one. “I gotta go put some money in the parking machine. I’ll put in enough for a few days, so nobody comes lookin’ before then. You all set?”

“I guess,” she said. “Yeah.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll be right back with the ticket for the dash, and then we’ll go see about gettin’ on a train.”

He pulled the keys out of the cup holder and wiped the fob down, and then set them down, using the wipe, right next to the gear lever.

“You’re just gonna leave them out like that?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking over at her. “Maybe someone’ll steal it.”

<<>>

The train tickets were twenty-four dollars for the two of them, purchased with cash from a machine at the south end of the platform. It wasn’t even five o’clock, but the station was already filling up with commuters.

They’d pushed the little yellow throw-pillow and the canister of wet wipes into a large trash can at the station’s entrance, and now they were standing close together, facing each other, on the New-York-bound side of the tracks, waiting for the train. Bucky’s head was down, hiding under the cap, the Kmart duffel bag slung over his left shoulder.

The first three trains that came through were discharge-only, and as they waited for one to arrive that was accepting passengers, the platform became more and more crowded, making Darcy antsy. He pulled her more closely into him, threading his flesh hand through her hair to cup the side of her neck, massaging the tense muscles at the top of her back. She let out a tight breath through pursed lips, trying to expel the nerves.

When their train finally pulled in, almost forty minutes later, they skipped the two end cars, which seemed favored by the other commuters; once aboard, Bucky quickly grabbed a spot on the side of the aisle that had only two seats instead of three. He let Darcy slip around him to take the window seat, while he reached up to stow the duffel bag in the luggage rack above them, and then slid into the aisle seat next to her. He reached over to take her hand with his flesh one, linking them together.

“You okay?” he said, keeping his head tipped down a little.

“Yeah,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Have to keep reminding myself, we’re just riding a train. Nothing to be nervous about. Yet.”

“Don’t want you to be nervous at all,” he said, pulling her hand up with his to give it a light brush of his lips. “Won’t let anything happen to you.”

“I’m not just nervous for me,” she said. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, either. Hurting you means hurting me.” She leaned into him and he squeezed her hand again, like he was answering her.

The train pulled out of the station, and they heard the conductor’s voice come over the P.A. system to announce the name of the next stop. Bucky had grabbed a schedule for her at the station, so that she could obsess over the number of stops remaining; they were staying on the line until the second-to-last stop: in Manhattan, at Harlem-125th Street. The Metro-North ran all the way to Grand Central, but going that close to Stark Tower didn’t seem like a good idea. From 125th, they’d be able to walk to the recently-expanded Q line and take that all the way to Brooklyn. It would probably be a long walk, but better than multiple subway transfers during the busy morning commute.

Once they got going, the collector came down the aisle in his snappy blue conductor’s cap and stopped to punch their tickets, which Bucky held out with his flesh hand. The man punched a couple more holes into a thin slip of paper and wordlessly tucked it into a little pocket on the back of Bucky’s headrest. Darcy let out a quiet breath once he’d made his way past them, feeling like they’d passed another checkpoint.

The ride into Manhattan took about forty minutes, and instead of tracking their progress, Darcy almost dozed off, startling each time the conductor’s voice crackled over the P.A. system. Finally, he made the announcement for Harlem-125th street, and Bucky made sure she was awake, and then stood up to get the duffel bag down.

The train pulled into the stop, and he held out his arm to help her up, and then quickly shuffled them out of the open doors of the car and into a flood of other early-morning commuters on the elevated, open-air platform. The sun had come up while they were on the train, and though it was still a comfortable morning temperature, she could already tell it was going to be a hot, sticky day in the city.

He had his arm around her, and held her back to let the main crush of people go in front of them down the stairs, and then they followed once it thinned out a bit, passing a homeless man on the landing who looked more like a crumpled collection of discarded items than a human being; the entire stairwell smelled like a bucket of week-old diapers.

The bottom of the stairs released them onto the streets of Manhattan— a completely different world from the platform above, it was a sensory assault of store-fronts, pedestrians, taxicabs and delivery trucks, and all manner of street construction— scaffolding, orange road barriers, and workmen everywhere— everything noisy in one way or another.

The dark underpass where the stairs let out was filled with people entering or leaving the station, intermixed with equal parts cops and panhandlers, whom the cops ignored. Bucky must have had some kind of scary murder-face on, because she saw more than one panhandler make to approach them and then quickly reconsider.

They didn’t linger, Bucky setting off in a seemingly random direction, a firm grip on Darcy’s hand, keeping her close. They headed down the sidewalk of 125th, aka Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd— a wide, busy street that had the massive blue-green steel towers of the Harlem River lift bridge as a backdrop to its vanishing point to the east.

This was Harlem— not Midtown or Downtown— so most of the buildings were fewer than eight stories tall, a mix of beautifully preserved brownstones with old-school zig-zag fire escapes, and the flavorless creeping-in of more modern construction. The street-level store-fronts were dominated by chains, bodegas, and all manner of tiny independent businesses.

After about a block, Bucky steered them into a Duane Reade on the corner, where they found a laughably overpriced laminated street-and-subway map— he’d memorized the subway line, but not the streets to get to it. There was a McDonald’s right across the street, and he nodded his head to it.

“Let’s get a coffee and sit a minute,” he said. “Figure out where we’re goin’.”

The restaurant was packed, deep in the morning rush, but he found a tiny open table and sat Darcy down at it with the duffel bag before getting into one of three long lines. She watched his back the entire time as he moved up in the line, her own body jittery and paranoid.

He finally made it to the front, ordered, and then returned, carrying a tray that had two coffees, two Egg McMuffins, and a couple of sleeves of hash-brown patties. He had to turn sideways to thread his body through the congested seating area, and hunched his shoulders when he sat down, trying to take up less space.

“I realized I’m hungry,” he said, pushing some of the food toward her. “You gotta be too. Try to eat somethin’.”

She dutifully picked up one of the sleeves of hash browns, but it was too hot, and she put it back down again, and instead just pulled the paper coffee cup closer to her, lifted the little plastic tab on the lid, locked it down to let the steam out, and waited. She knew she’d scald her tongue if she tried to drink any right away.

He studied the little fold-up map as he inhaled the Egg McMuffin, while Darcy scanned the room with her eyes, feeling exposed and almost itchy. The acoustics in the room were ridiculous— every noise sharpened and magnified, making an ugly blend of dozens of voices mixed with the harsh sound of chairs screeching on cheap tile as they were pushed back.

“I know,” he said, softly, noticing her discomfort. “Don’t like it in here either. But I didn’t wanna pull out the map on the street. Makes us a target, like we don’t know where we’re goin’.”

“We don’t,” she said, chuckling lightly and blowing on the opening of the coffee cup.

“Never got up to this side of town, before,” he said. “And even if I had, don’t think I’d recognize much anymore.”

“Did you go outside the Tower? When you were there with Steve?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. He popped open the tab on his coffee and took a sip, sucking in his lips for second. “Jesus, that’s hot.” He put it back down and continued. “I was, uh… wasn’t too functional when I was there. Barely spoke. No way they woulda let me just walk around. Even if I’d’a wanted to, which I didn’t.” He’d finished up his food and looked at the remaining wrapped sandwich and hash browns, raising his eyebrows as he looked at her. “You gonna eat somethin’?”

She shook her head. “Can’t,” she said. “Doesn’t sound good right now.”

He frowned, but slid the rest of the food back to himself and ate it quickly, balling up the wrappers on the tray. “All right,” he said. “Ready to go?”

“You know where we’re going?”

“Yeah. We’re gonna go one more block, then go south on 3rd, all the way to 96th Street. We can get the Q train there.”

He stood up, took the tray to a nearby trash can, and dumped the garbage before nesting the tray on the pile of empty ones up top. It was weird to see him do these mundane, urban human behaviors, and it almost made her laugh.

“What?” he said, returning to get the duffel bag and help her up.

She shook her head. “Nothing. Let’s get out of here."

<<>>

It took them a little over a half-hour to walk the almost thirty blocks to the north end of the Q line, and it felt surreal, being among so many people after hiding out for three days— almost like she was walking around in a very noisy dream. Everything seemed too bright, too loud, too busy.

She’d walked around Manhattan before, but it hadn’t felt like this— her heightened paranoia making her feel as though everyone they shared the sidewalk with was a potential threat. They both sipped at their coffees, finally cooled down enough to drink, and the action helped a little, giving her something normal to do as they walked, even as it felt artificial, robotic.

The longer they walked, though, the more she began to feel that familiar protection the big city afforded— of being just a speck in a swarm: there was such a variety of unusual people, everywhere you looked, that no one person seemed any more significant than any other. Darcy was pretty sure that she and Bucky were just as collectively invisible as anyone else in this crush of humanity— there was comfort in that.

The anxiety that remained, always present in the pit of her stomach, was more for what awaited them at the end of the Q line, and what that would mean for the days to come. There was a kind of dread to it— yet they marched forward, each step taking them closer to what felt somehow like a pre-written fate… though certainly they were still free people, and could have chosen to stop at any moment— to about-face and choose a different destiny. But they didn’t. As much as she feared the unknowns of this rendezvous, she also knew that reconnecting with Steve was their best hope for security. She wondered if Bucky would be choosing a different course if he were on his own.

The buildings were getting taller, and the tall buildings were becoming more frequent the farther south they walked, and the skin colors were changing as well— by the time they turned east on 96th Street, the darker tones that had dominated in Harlem were becoming less frequent in the foot traffic, and a feeling of old-guard affluence was beginning to creep in.

The entrance for the subway was like some kind of art installation suggestive of a glass hive, with escalators taking them deep down to the underground lair, which turned out to be so pristine, and lacking the typical blend of ancient fumes, garbage, and pee, that it was obviously a recently-built station.

There were a couple of ticket machines at the bottom, before the turnstiles, and Bucky hung back, tossing their empty coffee cups into a trash can, while Darcy analyzed the choices. She decided on sharing a single Pay-Per-Ride MetroCard, and added ten extra bucks to it, just in case.

There were a couple of transit cops standing by the turnstiles, and for a second she panicked, thinking of the hunting knife in the duffel bag, but the cops were deep in conversation, laughing, and didn’t seem to give them a second look as she swiped the card, letting Bucky go through first with the bag, and then she swiped it again and pushed through behind him.

“Jesus,” she murmured, her hands shaking a little. “It all could have gone to shit, right there.”

“We’re okay,” he said, putting his hand against the small of her back as they went down the wide staircase to the platforms. Visible on the beam above, as they descended, was the New York state motto in all caps: _EXCELSIOR_. It seemed ironic, considering they were going down.

There was already a train waiting at the platform, doors standing open, and they boarded quickly, found a spot next to an old lady on one of the molded powder-blue bench seats, and stowed the duffel bag underneath. Another train pulled in on the other side of the platform while they were waiting, dumping all of its passengers at the northern terminus, and she fidgeted, feeling vulnerable as they sat there, unmoving. Bucky took her hand, squeezed it, and then released it to put his arm around her. She leaned into him, silent.

Finally, the doors on the car slammed shut, and the train accelerated away from the stop, Brooklyn-bound: to the end of the line.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \---------------------------------------  
> Every time I worked on this chapter I'd think of Stan Lee ("Excelsior!")... R.I.P, sir.  
> \---------------------------------------


	22. Chapter 22

By the time the Q train emerged from underground to cross the East River into Brooklyn, the car they were in was almost empty— it was down to them, the old white lady, a tourist family with three little kids headed to Coney Island, and a heavyset dark-skinned woman with immaculate box braids, dozing off in her blue nursing scrubs.

Bucky and Darcy had moved across the aisle to an open bench seat of their own, dragging the duffel bag over with them. They had a view of downtown Manhattan out the windows, receding as they left it behind on their right, and she could see the iconic shape of the Brooklyn Bridge, parallel to them in the distance, crossing the same river. Bucky was looking too, and she could feel tension bleeding off of him.

She bumped him gently with with her elbow and grabbed his hand, which was sitting clenched in his lap. “You okay?” she said softly.

He was working his jaw, close-lipped, and then he tipped his head down, avoiding the view. “Don’t know why I picked Brooklyn,” he said, bouncing his leg. “Wasn’t thinkin’ about how it’d make me feel. Just chose a place I knew me and Stevie’d both know, far away from the Tower.”

She didn’t have any words of consolation for him, so she just squeezed his hand, as if to say, _I’m here_. Once they were over the bridge the train dipped back underground, and he relaxed a little— but then a few stops later they went up again, and stayed above ground for the remainder of the trip. Bucky stopped looking out the windows and at times even shut his eyes, holding himself very still as he held her hand.

It was a long ride— just over an hour— and he seemed to almost meditate through the second half of it, his eyes opening again when the conductor announced the stop for West 8 Street-New York Aquarium— the last one before Coney Island. “We should get off next stop,” he said. “Not the one for the meet.”

He reached down to grab the duffel bag, looping the straps over his left arm, and then leaned over, clasping his hands between his legs, his forearms resting on his thighs. He shut his eyes and let out a slow breath.

“Hey,” she said, threading her arm through his, and leaning her head against his shoulder. “It’s gonna be okay.” The old lady and the nurse had both gotten off the train, and they now had most of the car to themselves— the tourist family had moved down to the opposite end, the parents in their own hell, trying to keep their kids from jumping all over the seats like naughty monkeys.

Darcy felt like they had a tiny bubble of privacy, there at the end of the car, and rubbed her hand on his back, soothing him. When he sat up again, she reached up to tug on his jaw, pulling his face more toward her own, running her fingers over the prickle of his beard coming in. She sat up enough to brush her lips against his, holding him there with her hand, just a soft press of her mouth and a gentle drag against his scruff, and it gave her an electric tingle, as chaste as it was. If they hadn’t been in public, she would have deepened it, but she hoped even the small gesture would help him, remind him that she was in it with him, all the way, no matter what.

He tipped his forehead against hers, exhaling, and she flooded with a feeling of connection to him, as though they were forming collective nerve endings, the tendrils of which were firing, newly sensitive, every time they touched.

The train was coming up to the next stop, the conductor calling it out, and Bucky lifted his head up, his lips pressed together, ready… He pushed himself up, holding his flesh hand out to hers as he slung the bag over his left shoulder. She stood and then swayed against him as the train braked to a stop, and then the doors whooshed open and they stepped out.

The stairs down to the street dumped them out on Surf Avenue; the high metal frames of the roller coasters, the ferris wheel, and the other carnival rides of Coney Island were starkly visible just across the street and to their right. Bucky sucked in a breath and his grip tightened on her hand, but he kept moving, guiding them to the crosswalk, where they waited, along with the family from the train, until the light turned green.

They crossed the street and headed toward the rides, the ticket booth for the Cyclone just a block away. There was an ugly chain-link fence walling off the land around the roller coaster, blocking off everything except for a tiny blue-and-red ticket booth, which had a sign on top that read, _Cyclone — $10_.

“Jesus,” said Bucky. “Ten dollars.” She could feel that he was wound up tight, almost vibrating, his comments serving to quiet his nerves. They turned down a side street, headed toward the beach, and passed more run-down looking attractions, more walls of chain-link fences. “Jesus,” he said again. “What happened to this place. Looks like a dump.”

There were more little groups of tourists wandering around, many with small children, and Darcy couldn’t help feeling bad for them— they’d probably picked the destination out of a guide-book and had been expecting something fancier, like a theme park.

“We got a couple hours to use up,” he said. “You wanna go sit on the beach? Least nobody’s gonna bother us there.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Sounds good.”

They walked to the end of the block, which fed into a wide pedestrian walkway with a few sets of steps leading up the gradual slope to the boardwalk, and then she could see the ocean, and she immediately felt lighter, less penned in, for the first time since they’d gotten on the train that morning in White Plains.

The boardwalk was jammed with colorful if somewhat junky-looking shops and restaurants, and Bucky stopped at one where a man with a beach-ball belly sat out front on a stool, a cigarette hanging on the edge of his lip. He had a strong eastern-European accent, and Bucky bought a couple of cheap beach towels from him, and spoke to him in what sounded like flawless Russian. The man pulled out a battered cell phone and glanced at it, and then replied to Bucky in more Russian, and then they exchanged a few more polite words.

“What’d you ask him?” she said, once they’d walked away with the towels.

“What time it is.”

“Oh. How do you say that?”

He looked down at her, gave her an affectionate smile. “ _Katóry chas_ ,” he said, giving the R a single roll of his tongue.

“Mmm,” she said, smiling. “I love the way that sounds. I wish I could speak another language.”

“I don’t remember learnin’ it, not exactly.” He paused and said, “Or maybe I don’t wanna.”

“Does it bother you?” she asked. “Hearing it? Speaking it?”

“Not really,” he said. “S’Just somethin’ I can do now, that I couldn’t… before.”

There weren’t many people on the beach yet, and it was easy to find a spot that gave them a large buffer between themselves and anyone else. He dumped the duffel bag down in the sand and spread out the towels, which weren’t very big, and he said, ruefully, “Shoulda bought a few more.”

“It’s fine,” she said, sitting down on one, hugging herself with her arms. She didn’t think she could recline back, not without being in a lot of pain.

“You’re hurtin’ aren’t you,” he said, frowning.

“Yeah,” she said. She wasn’t about to deny it, not after her promise.

“C’mere,” he said, and he scooted up so that he was behind her, and encouraged her to lean back, against the steady cradle of his body, his legs on either side of her, just as they’d sat when they’d woken up from the fall, and he’d re-set her shoulder. He used his hand to brush her hair back on the right side of her face, and leaned down to kiss the top of her head. “We gotta get you some better medicine,” he said. “If we don’t do nothin’ else with this meet-up, we gotta at least do that.”

“That’d be good,” she said, “but I hope we can get more out of it than that. Like a place to sleep for more than one night.” As soon as she’d said it, she felt bad, knowing that he felt responsible for her well-being, so she changed the subject. “So is it totally different now? Coney, I mean? It must be so weird to be here…”

He hesitated, thinking. “It’s different, but… I can still see it underneath, how I remember it… like the bones are the same.” He had his arms propped on his knees, on either side of her, and he moved them down to wrap lightly around her upper body. “I’m kinda surprised by what a dump it is now, though, compared to when I was a kid. I wouldn’t bring a girl here, now.”

She chuckled, and then winced from the stab of pain she got for it. “You _are_ bringing a girl here.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like it’s a date or somethin’,” he said. “I’d take you somewhere nicer. Take you out dancin’.”

She blinked her eyes slowly, trying to imagine it. “I’m no good at your kind of dancing,” she said.

“I’m probably not anymore, either,” he said.

“I don’t know,” she said playfully. “You seem to remember how to do other stuff pretty well.”

“Oh yeah?” he said, his voice low, and she felt his lips brush the back of her ear. She breathed deeply, slowly— trying not to let it hurt.

“You better stop,” she said, smiling. “You’re gonna get my motor running, with nowhere to go to do anything about it. I’ll have to push you down in the sand and get busy right here. We’ll scare away all the nice families.”

She could hear the grin in his words. “Used to take girls up on the ferris wheel, if I wanted to steal a kiss.”

“Oh yeah?” she smiled. “What a smooth bastard you must’ve been.”

He chuckled, but didn’t deny it. “Me and Stevie, I’d find us a couple’a dates, we’d bring ‘em down here, try to romance ‘em…”

“Try to?”

“Well… I did all right, but Stevie… there were a lot of nights it ended up bein’ just us two walkin’ around, the girls takin’ off after they saw how small he was. It was tough.”

She ached a little, thinking of skinny Steve, being spurned by girls he didn’t even want to date. She wished she could have known him then, been his friend. “Maybe he didn’t mind it so much,” she said. “Just walking around, the two of you.”

Bucky was quiet for a minute, looping ringlets of her hair with the fingers of his right hand, and then he said, “You know, I used to be pretty good, knowin’ when a girl was lookin’ at me. You know what I mean. I could feel it, across a room.” He paused and then said, “There were times I could swear I was gettin’ the same thing from Steve— like he was... lookin’.”

Darcy forced herself to be quiet, let him say what he was going to say, without interrupting.

“I blew it off at first,” he said. “Told myself I was imaginin’ things. Didn’t know what to do with that. I guess I thought— you know, if he found the right girl…” He cut himself off with a reproachful sound. “I was a stupid kid.”

“Not stupid,” she said, softly. “You were his best friend. Just wanted him to be happy.”

“I hope he can be, some day,” he said.

“It’s easier now,” she said. “Things are a lot more open.” After a moment she said, “I just hope he doesn’t start going on Grindr or something.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s um… like a networking thing. Online. For guys. People use it to hook up.”

It took him a minute, but he figured it out. “Well, Stevie’s a grown man. He can handle himself, even when he’s not bein’ Captain America. He’s probably too old-fashioned for that kinda thing, anyway. He wouldn’t even wanna hold hands with someone without takin’ ‘em out for dinner first.”

“Aww,” she said, smiling. “That’s sweet.”

She was quiet for a while, and then said, softly, “Could you tell with me? That I was looking? Back, you know… at the place?”

He’d dropped the loop of hair and was running his hand softly up and down the top of her arm, from her hand to her elbow, and then back to her hand, linking their fingers, his palm on top of her knuckles.

“Wasn’t sure,” he said. “Didn’t wanna misread it.” Their hands were still linked together, and he was rubbing the side of hers with his thumb. “Feels like… stakes are higher now. I don’t— I didn’t want it to just be foolin’ around.” She could hear the teasing in his voice when he said, “Not that I got somethin’ against foolin’ around…”

She wanted to roll onto her side, sink into him, show him just how much _she_ liked fooling around, but she knew she couldn’t. The forced restraint was unbearable. “So what time is it, anyway?” she said instead. “How much longer?”

“Guy said it was ten to nine. Probably quarter after, now. We got another hour to kill before we start headin’ over.”

“Why don’t you read me some of your book? The one you stole?”

“Yeah?”

“Sure. It’ll help pass the time.”

“Okay,” he said, and let go of her hand, twisting a little to reach the duffel bag, were it was nestled in the sand. She heard him unzip it, and quickly produced the little pink book. He brought his arms back around her, so that she could see the pages, and started flipping through it. “Which one should I read?”

“I don’t care,” she said. “Whatever. Do you know how to read the Spanish versions?”

“Sure,” he said. “I had to learn a bunch of languages, for… well, you know.”

“Oooh, then definitely read them in Spanish first,” she said. “That’s gonna be hot as fuck.”

He started laughing, trying to restrain himself so that he wouldn’t jiggle her body. “Doll.”

“Start reading, magic man.”

“Magic man?”

“Yeah. Your gypsy voodoo sex spell is working, so keep it up.”

He shook again behind her with laughter, and it was good medicine, for her but also for him, she hoped— releasing some more of that tension— and then he composed himself and flipped through the pages of the book, searching, finally settling on one that had a dog-eared page, reading the words smoothly as though he knew them already.

She couldn’t understand the Spanish, only able to pick out a few words— something about a heart, the night, and love— but the sound of his low voice reading it, the feel of it in his chest behind her, his arms around her, was enough, and she closed her eyes, let it rock her into a safe place inside, where it was just the two of them, and they could do anything…

<<>>

“I hate to say it, but I gotta pee,” she said, shifting her hips uncomfortably. “That coffee finally caught up with me.”

He’d read to her for a while, and then they’d simply rested there, wrapped in each other, watching the blue of the ocean change as the sun drifted higher into the sky. Now more people were dotting the span of the beach, lifeguards had set themselves up at their posts, and they could hear the shrieks of little children as they scampered in their suits to the water’s edge, not caring that it was murky and probably filled with gallons of pee. If she’d been wearing a suit, she would have added her own to it.

“It’s almost time to leave, anyway,” he said. “Come on. We’ll find you somewhere to go.” He sat up fully from his leaned-back position, helping her to sit up more, and then gave her his hand so that she could lever herself up as he stood, grabbing the duffel bag. They left the towels lying on the sand.

They walked eastward down the boardwalk, looking for a public bathroom, when finally Bucky pointed and said, “There,” indicating a pair of bizarre-looking structures just off the boardwalk, over the beach. They looked like a couple of recreational vehicles on stilts, with ramps leading up to their entrances; one of them had large geometrical male-female shapes on the end of it, with circles for the heads and triangles for the bodies— apparently women wore dresses, while men were made of shoulders.

Feeling less antsy after relieving herself, she rejoined him at the bottom of the ramp, and they retraced their steps back to 10th Street, and from there, to Surf Avenue. Just as they were passing an old-fashioned video arcade, Bucky grabbed her arm and pulled her quickly into his chest, almost hurting her, as he ducked behind the limited cover of a thick orange signpost on the sidewalk.

“What—” she started to say, but he cut her off, speaking low.

“They’re already here.”

“Who is it?” She was whispering now too.

“ _Shit_ ,” he said, emphatically, and she crowded herself closer to him, feeling exposed, vulnerable. “There’s a man— I think it’s the archer— he’s communicating with someone.” She instinctively turned her head, but he stopped her, saying, “Don’t look.”

“He’s not aiming at us, is he?”

“Not at the moment. He won’t put an arrow in me here— too many people around.”

“So what do we do?”

“He knows I made him. Let’s keep moving.”

They continued down the sidewalk, walking briskly, and she said, “Is he still there?”

“Yeah. He’s on the rooftops. Keepin’ his distance, but he’s got eyes on us. He’s good.”

Suddenly he stopped, pulled her into him again instinctively, shielding her with his body, and swore again.

“What is it?” she whispered, feeling hot and shaky. The adrenaline was kicking in.

“I bet they think you’re my hostage.”

“What?!? Why would they—”

“Think about it— they don’t know I broke programming; they gotta assume I’m still operating as the Soldier... 'least 'til they get evidence otherwise.”

“Yeah, but— why would you contact Steve, do the Amazon thing if—”

“Because that’s what I was trained to do,” he said, simply. “Take out my targets, with any means or intelligence available to me.”

“But your last orders weren’t to kill Steve.”

“You’re right,” he said. “My last orders were to kill you.”

She looked up at him, a heavy feeling in her, realizing that they hadn’t acknowledged it before— she hadn’t even been sure he’d known… what he remembered— if anything.

“It still wouldn’t make sense,” she said. “Why would you keep me alive, if— there’s no logic to it.”

“No, but they don’t know what they’re dealing with, and they’re acting accordingly, until they do. It’s the right strategy.” He pulled the cap off his head, went to a trash can a few steps away, and threw it inside, ran a hand through his hair.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He reached out and took her hand. “Showin’ them I ain’t tryin’ to hide.”

<<>>

It only took them a minute to walk the extra block-and-a-half to the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue subway station, standing out on Surf Avenue with its vintage cream-brick parapet from the original station house. They walked in, shouldering their way through the crowded interior, leaving the sun behind them to enter the concourse, which was like a small shopping mall: the crowded walkway was lined with shops and fast food, while the wall-space was taken up by large, glass-framed posters advertising current-release films and public-service campaigns.

“It’s too crowded,” he said, having to raise his voice to be heard over the messy rumble of footfalls and voices. “But they know we’re here. Gotta lead ‘em to a better place.” They made their way with the stream of the crowd, following the signs to the other exit, on Stillwell Avenue, and back out onto the sidewalk. “They’ll follow,” he said.

Keeping his hand in hers, he led them down the sidewalk, under the archways flanked by greenish metal support beams for the tracks overhead, until the next intersection, which was a four-way with the right turn closest to them going under the train tracks. He turned her that way, going into the darkness under the tracks, and she saw that it was a not a regular roadway, but a pair of bus stops, separated by an island of alternating wrought-iron fence and large red-brick beams that reached up to the railway overpass. The bus stops were busy, crowded with people waiting, and he continued walking, making a frustrated sound, all the way past the bus stops, and back into the sun on the other side of the tracks.

They were in an alley on the back side of some kind of shared property; single-story red-brick buildings sat at comfortable distances from each other, separated by shady areas of grass and narrow walkways through trees. He led the way down one of the walkways, until they came to a mid-sized sandy-dirt square, flanked on each of its four sides by green-painted park benches, several large shade trees, and a big flagpole in the center with an American flag flying high on it. It looked like the kind of place where old men would sit and feed pigeons, but it was empty of both people and birds.

“Here,” he said, setting the duffel bag down on one of the benches, and then he deliberately stepped back from it, on her right, raising his hands as though placating an invisible police officer.

“What—”

“Just sit tight, doll. Don’t move. They’re already here.”

He wouldn’t look at her, and she wanted to go to him, but she trusted his judgment, and stayed where she was, trying to remain calm. Her skin was crawling, feeling like she was in some movie where the red dots of laser-sighted weaponry were being trained on their bodies, unbeknownst to them. She knew Barton wouldn’t shoot her, but she didn’t have as much faith in their treatment of Bucky, and the instinct to protect him was ferocious.

And then, all at once, she saw Steve, in the distance, stepping out from behind one of the red-bricked buildings, and she sucked in a mouthful of air and breathed his name, and little tears bit at the corners of her eyes, and Bucky hissed out, keeping her from just running to him: “ _Not yet_.”

Steve was stepping their way, slowly, one arm out, palm down, low, like a handler approaching a frightened horse, and then Darcy heard a noise behind her, and she turned her head and saw the redhead out of the corner of her eye, just for a moment, and she sucked in her breath again, starting to panic, remembering the last time, and said, “Bucky?” with urgency, trying to keep calm.

“Hold tight, doll, it’s okay— let them do their thing.”

She’d never before felt so much like a piece of meat, being stalked by predators, wild hounds circling their quarry slowly, having surrounded it— the instinct to bolt was almost overpowering.

Bucky was still frozen to her right, a few paces away, like a park statue in a plaid shirt, his arms still up, his gaze deliberately angled down and to the side, passive, and she hated it, furious that he had to emasculate himself like this— deliberately make himself so vulnerable— but knew it was necessary, for his own safety.

Steve was close now, and inclined his head slightly to say something into a concealed headset— she couldn’t make out what— and then he was at the sandy square, his eyes only on Bucky, like he was seeing a ghost, and then she remembered— _the hair_ , Bucky looking like he’d stepped out of the past, and she watched Steve, could see him trying to keep it together, his mouth forming the name of his friend, but no sound coming out. His cheek still had a purple bruise on it, from where Bucky had struck him, back in the safe room, but the wound that’d been so ugly a few days before had otherwise already healed.

He was wearing his dorky tan pants and a navy T-shirt and sneakers, and the fact that he’d come in that— not in some kind of combat gear— was comforting, reassuring, and finally she had to speak, couldn’t stand the tension anymore, desperately wanting to know where the redhead was, not seeing her, but feeling her there, somewhere…

“Please say something,” she said, quivering from the stress, and Steve’s face snapped to her, breathing heavily, as though he was only now seeing her.

“Darcy,” he said, softly, his voice almost cracking. “Are you— what— are you okay?”

“She’s got busted ribs,” said Bucky, his eyes still averted. “She needs help.”

Steve let out a deep breath, looking back at Bucky, responding to his voice—hearing, she hoped, that it wasn’t the Soldier— before he moved his eyes back to Darcy. “You okay?” he asked again.

“He’s hurt too,” she said, in answer. “He— half his back got ripped off, saving me from the fall. Steve, _please_ , stop this— let him put his hands down.”

“I’m okay, doll,” said Bucky, still frozen, but his voice was calm, reassuring, and Steve looked at him again, his lips pressed together. He let out another deep breath through his nose and then pulled a phone out of his back pocket, tapped it, and held it up to his ear. He spoke into it after a few seconds.

“Jane,” he said, and Darcy’s face crumpled, looking at Steve as he spoke to her friend.

“She’s okay,” he continued, speaking into the phone, his eyes on her. “Yeah. I’m looking right at her. I will. Okay.” He pulled the phone away from his face and put it back into his pants pocket, and then looked at her again. “We didn’t know…” he started, and then said, “We weren’t sure if—”

“It’s okay,” she said. “Thank you for calling her.” And then, “Steve, please,” and she stepped cautiously toward Bucky, but she saw Barton then, creeping from behind the shade trees like a wood-elf in black, an arrow nocked but not yet drawn, and she halted, afraid to make any sudden move.

And then Sam was there too, coming up on the other side, behind Steve, and he had his hands out too, palms toward them, and said, “Darcy, you’re okay, we got you,” and she wavered, wanting to go to Bucky, but trying to keep her eyes on them all, sensing that they wanted her to step away from him, not the opposite.

“Where’s the other one,” she said. “Where’s the redhead.” A tear tracked down her face. “Don’t let her hurt him.”

They seemed confused, and Steve started to say, “What—” and then she took another step toward Bucky, her left hand reaching up shakily to grasp the hand closest to her, the metal one, still wrapped in the work-glove from Walmart. She wanted to rip it off him, because he had nothing to hide from them, but she just took it, gently, pulling it down from its raised position, and when their hands were down she turned her palm so that she could thread her fingers through his, as best she could with the glove still on him.

She could see them watching her— watching their hands, how she’d linked them together— and she could feel them all judging it, like she had fucking Stockholm Syndrome or something, and she wanted to tell them all to go fuck themselves… wanted to take his hand and walk away from there with him.

But then Steve spoke into his headset again, tipping his mouth to the side, and she could hear it this time; he said, “Stand down,” and then, “My call,” and she let out a breath and squeezed Bucky’s hand, the metal unyielding.

Bucky was still frozen, but he spoke, his voice rough: “What happened to Wells.”

“We don’t know,” said Steve. “Still no sign of her. Barton’s got a team lookin’, and they’re takin’ another look at her apartment, seein’ if they missed anything…”

Bucky shut his eyes. “I mean— the other one. The imposter.” He still had his other arm up in the air.

“She survived the landing. Barely. She’s stable, but she’s in a coma.” His eyes were locked onto Bucky. “I put the plane down as soon as I could, but you’d already…” He stopped, his voice full of emotion. “We looked for you…” and then, “Bucky, you can put your hand down. It’s okay.”

Sam spoke up then: “We kept your name out of it— official story goes, those strike teams attacked Avengers HQ, took Steve, hijacked the jet from there.” He looked to Bucky. “Far as anyone knows, the Winter Soldier is still at large, no sign of him since D.C.— just like before.”

“Thanks, Sam,” said Darcy, softly, and he nodded silently to her when she met his eyes, and then she looked at Barton, who was still flanking them, to Steve’s right. “There aren’t any leads on Wells? The real Wells?”

“No,” he said, his voice rough. He’d finally lowered his bow, returned the readied arrow to the quiver on his back. “I’m hopin’ we can get some answers outa the imposter, once she wakes up.”

“Do you think she will? Talk? I mean, if her brain’s not scrambled?”

Barton rolled one of his shoulders. “Tasha’s very good at her job.”

“We’re still tryin’ to figure out what happened,” said Steve. “We’re pretty sure there was a breach at the Tower. Information getting out. Not just intel, but tech, too. Going back a while. Tony shut down the entire building— he’s only letting staff back in piece by piece, on an as-needed basis.”

Darcy couldn’t hide her surprise: “But that’s gotta be, like, literally thousands of jobs.”

“It’s been a crazy couple of days,” said Sam. He was watching her closely. “Sure was a relief when Steve told us he’d gotten your message.”

Steve had turned to Bucky again, and he seemed to want to reach his hand out to him, but he stopped himself. “Are you going to— can you— Buck, you gotta come in.”

Bucky’s voice sounded scratchy, tired. “You gonna help her?”

“What— you mean Darcy? Of course,” said Steve. “You too.”

“Where you gonna take her?”

“The Tower, I guess,” said Steve. “Jane’s there, and—”

“She gonna be safe there?” Bucky interrupted.

Sam spoke up then: “Safest place on Earth, right now. Tony’s got rooms for you, anything you need.”

Darcy spoke up then, irritated that they were talking about her like she wasn’t even there. “We’re staying together,” she said, a bit too fiercely.

She felt Bucky’s hand squeeze hers, just slightly, and she waited defiantly for their protestations, but Steve just nodded curtly and said, “Sure, of course. Whatever you want.”

She sagged a little, letting go of some of her tension, and then the redhead was finally there, materializing somewhere behind them, silent, and when she moved around them to stand next to Barton, Darcy finally got a good look at her. She was tiny, but built like a cheetah— her face a mask, revealing nothing. Darcy could feel herself being assessed, like she was some lower life-form, a curiosity to be studied, before the woman’s eyes left her with a subtle turn of the head, her gaze shifting to Bucky.

She said something to him in Russian, and he responded, the words fluid in his deep voice, and then he must have asked her a question, because the Widow said, “ _Da_ ,” nodding her head, and then she said more, a serious look on her face.

He asked her another question, and there was an intensity to him, and the Widow gave him a short answer, maybe two or three words, and he held her eyes a beat, and then turned to Steve and said, “If Darcy wants to go in, we’ll go in. It’s her call.”

She wanted to know what he’d said, what he’d asked the Widow. But he’d deliberately stuck to Russian, so either he didn’t want her to know, or he didn’t want the others to know— or both. In any case, it really just came down to whether or not she trusted him, as he apparently trusted her, to make the decision.

“We’re coming in,” she said.

Steve uncrossed his arms, letting them fall to his sides, awkward, his head dipping down a little, saying nothing, and she could read the relief in all of that, realizing that he’d been just as tense as she’d been, just as afraid this wouldn’t go the way he’d wanted.

She felt Bucky release her hand, and she smiled because he already knew her so well, knew what she needed to do, and she finally moved forward the few long strides to Steve, sinking into him, wrapping her arms around his big body as she pressed her face sideways into his chest. She felt his arms come around her as Bucky said, “Watch the ribs.”

Steve huffed a laugh as he held her carefully and said, “Don’t gotta worry, Buck— M’not not gonna hurt your girl.”

Darcy held him a little tighter— touched by the sweetness of his words— and whispered, “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

He whispered, “S’all right now. You guys don’t gotta worry ‘bout nothin’,” and she smiled at the familiar style of speech, so like Bucky’s, as if their proximity drew the rhythms out of each other. “You hungry?”

“I could eat a house,” she admitted. “And then I want to sleep for about a week.”

He chuckled, his arms still around her. “I know the feeling.”

“Hey, uh, I hate to interrupt,” said Barton, “but if you saps are all done huggin’ and cryin’, I should get the jet back. Don’t wanna have to lie any more than necessary ‘bout what I been usin’ it for, now that we’re down to one. If anyone wants a ride with me and Tasha, you gotta go now.”

“Hey,” said Darcy, smiling sideways against Steve’s chest, finally pulling out of the hug to look at Clint. “Thanks for the lasagne. It was a big hit.”

“Any time,” he said. “So, you want a ride, or what?”

“Is there an Option B?” she asked.

“Steve and I borrowed one of Tony’s cars,” said Sam. “Either way’s cool with us.”

Darcy glanced to Bucky and then looked back at the others and said, “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not get back in a jet for a while.”

“Understood,” said Clint, and made to give her a sideways hug, thought better of it with her wounds, and instead moved in, putting his hand on the side of her head so that he could hold her steady for a kiss on the temple.

“You movin’ in on my girl, archer?” asked Bucky, trying for a gruff joke, though Darcy could tell it was forced— that he was still vibrating with tension.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,”said Barton, and he gave her a wink, before spinning around to leave, Natasha by his side. “See ya back there,” he called as they walked away.

“My turn,” said Sam, as he moved in to fold her carefully into a soft hug, his big hand smoothing down her hair. "I'm real glad to see you're all right," he said softly, before stepping back. “So,” he said, putting his hands on his hips. “How are we gonna do this— Food? Tower? Food first?”

“Can we get food at the Tower?” she asked. She’d returned to Bucky’s side and then moved closer into him, her back pressed against his front, and his arms had automatically come around her in a sheltering position; if the others were surprised by the casual intimacy, they didn’t show it. Steve, she could tell, was trying hard not to openly stare at his friend.

“Is the cafeteria open?” she was saying. “Or can we just order a pizza or something? I don’t think I can handle much more today.”

“Girl, you can have whatever you want,” said Sam, his eyes soft. “Just say the word.”

"What ya say, Buck," said Steve, his face finally softening into a hesitant smile. "Pizza sound all right to you?"

He didn't answer, and Darcy spoke for both of them. “I just want to know we’re safe.” She tilted her head up to Bucky and then looked at Sam again. “Both of us,” she clarified.

Sam nodded and said, “I got you,” and walked over to the duffel bag, forgotten on the bench, and said, “This comin’ with us?” He picked it up and shouldered it himself, and said, “Let’s get you guys home.”


	23. Chapter 23

The ride into Manhattan seemed to take forever; the jerky, stop-and-go traffic and frequent honking of horns kept Darcy from falling asleep in her seat. Bucky was in the back with her, on her left, his eyes shut, but she knew he was awake too, by the way he held himself unnaturally still, his breathing barely audible.

Sam was at the wheel, muttering at the other drivers as he navigated the mid-afternoon snarl, while Steve made arrangements on his phone— she could hear him talking about security and pizza. The bruise on his neck had faded completely; Darcy wondered if Bucky had any memory of what he’d done to his friend while under Wells’ control. Steve turned to look at them after he hung up, his blue eyes bright, like he was happy just to see them sitting there.

“We gotta get your biometrics set up,” he said to Darcy. “Buck, yours are already in the system, from before. Tony’s got it so we can override to get her in, but everyone needs a hand-scan, at the very least, for even the common areas now. He’s not takin’ anything for granted.”

Bucky spoke up for the first time since they’d gotten into the car in Brooklyn. “Glad to hear he’s takin’ the problem seriously,” he said. “I’d like to know how they found me.”

“Workin’ on it,” said Steve. “There were some suspicious events in the days leading up to the attack… didn’t seem so at the time, but lookin’ back now… anyway, we’ll update you on all of that once you’ve had a chance to rest.”

“Stark got any medical staff cleared yet?” asked Bucky. “She’s gonna need an X-ray, or whatever they do now… and some medicine. She’s been in a lot of pain.”

“You need to get looked at too,” she mumbled, half asleep. “Don’t let him brush it off,” she said to Steve. “It was bad…”

Steve frowned a little and looked at Bucky, but swiveled to face front again when Sam laid on the horn, braking with a jolt. Sam made a hand gesture at the car in front of them; “Unbelievable,” he muttered.

“Still not as bad as D.C.,” said Steve.

“Well, you’re not wrong,” said Sam, as they moved forward again.

Almost an hour after leaving Coney Island, they were threading through the heavily-congested streets of Midtown, until Sam finally turned the car into a restricted entrance right around the corner from Grand Central Terminal. He swiped a key card at the gate, and made his way down a tunnel to another checkpoint, where he lowered the driver’s side window to scan his palm-print at a virtual guard post.

Darcy yawned, the pain of it waking her up a little as they entered the private lot and cruised past a collection of luxury automobiles in a rainbow of colors, and then Sam pulled into an empty spot and parked. Steve looked back at them again, and noticed Bucky putting his gloves back on.

“You don’t need to cover up,” he said. “Place is empty, ‘cept for people who already seen it, or already know.” The all piled slowly out of the car, and Steve popped open the trunk to get their duffel bag out.

“Where to first?” asked Sam, as he led the way to a set of elevator doors. He scanned his palm at a screen above the call buttons. A light flashed green, and he stepped onto the car after the doors opened. “Medical, or pizza?”

“Pizza,” said Darcy, at the same time that Bucky said, “Medical.”

“I can wait another hour,” she said, when he looked at her. “I’m so fucking hungry.”

“Hold up,” said Steve, when Darcy moved to board the elevator. He scanned his own hand, and then punched in a series of numbers next to the input screen. When the light turned green, he gestured to Darcy to go ahead of him. Bucky got on last, scanning his flesh hand at the screen, and then turned sideways to shoulder past Steve to the rear of the car.

Steve’s phone rang, and he pulled it out of his pocket and held it up to his ear. “Yeah. You get the pizzas? Will do. Thanks, Tony.” He leaned over and scanned a key card against a circular pad on the elevator wall, and then punched the button for the penthouse. A second later, the doors shut and they began to ascend rapidly.

“Will Mr. Stark be meeting us?” asked Darcy, trying to sound relaxed, but hoping the answer was ‘no’— she didn’t feel up to meeting the billionaire at the moment, and could feel Bucky’s anxiety ramping up by the minute. His eyes were scanning everything, and she could hear his metal parts whirr as she crowded next to him. She found his flesh hand and grabbed onto it. He let her do it, but didn’t squeeze back.

“He’s in the middle of something,” said Steve. “He’ll catch up with us later.” Darcy wondered if that was really true, or if maybe Stark was simply doing Bucky a kindness— either way, she breathed a little easier, knowing they wouldn’t have to deal with that particular reunion right off the bat.

The elevator came to a stop some eighty floors up, and as they stepped out, Darcy sucked in her breath, unprepared for the opulence in front of her. The room was enormous— a three-story open-concept cocktail lounge with room to accommodate hundreds of guests, with multiple seating areas on each level, accessible by floating stairways on each side of the room. Glass-and-metal coffee tables sat upon texturally-contrasting deep-pile area rugs, surrounded by sleek, low-backed leather couches and chairs.

Sam and Steve, accustomed to all of it, ambled easily through the room, their destination a coffee table piled high with a half-dozen cardboard pizza boxes. Darcy followed, trying to shake off the feeling of intimidation, dropping Bucky’s hand to make her way over to the towering glass walls on the other side of the room. Looking down through the glass, she could see a landing pad large enough for a Quinjet, jutting out one floor below.

The view of the city communicated wealth more than anything else in the room, delivering an unobstructed sweep over Manhattan, looking east. The unmistakable art-deco spire of the Chrysler Building, only two blocks away, dominated the scene, its steel glowing gold as the sun curved westward in the afternoon sky. It was framed artistically by the panoramic windows, as if its sole purpose was to adorn and accessorize Tony Stark’s penthouse living-room.

“Why don’t you sit down. Eat something,” said Bucky, who’d quietly come up beside her. She looked up, saw that he was staring out at the view too, looking just as dazed as she felt.

She walked back to the seating area where Sam was opening one of the pizza boxes. She was starting to feel like she was on autopilot, and she lowered herself down to the buttery bone-colored leather and then sat there unmoving, until Sam helped her out, pulling a gooey slice of cheese pizza from one of the boxes. He put it on a plain white plate that he got from a stack next to the boxes, and she robotically took it when he held it out to her.

Steve had wandered over to stand next to Bucky, and she watched as the two men stood side-by-side, unspeaking, silhouetted against the still-bright sky in front of them. She finally took a bite of the pizza, and when the salty-sweet flavor of the cheese and sauce hit her tongue, her instincts finally took over, and she made quick work of the slice. She paused for a moment and then lifted the lid on the box to grab another.

“You want a drink?” asked Sam. “Water? Beer?”

“A beer would be amazing,” she said, after swallowing a bite. “Thanks, Sam.”

He pushed himself up and went over to the bar, dropping down behind it to access a refrigerator. The room was quiet, and she could hear him popping the bottle cap off. “Barnes?” he called out. “Wanna beer?”

She heard Bucky clear his throat and then say, “No thanks.” He seemed very far away— not so much physically, as emotionally— and she didn’t know how to interpret it. A fresh wave of fatigue rolled over her, and she put her plate down on the table, the second slice half-eaten, accepting the beer bottle that Sam brought her.

“Is there someone waiting for us in medical?” she asked, just to have something to say. She could feel Sam watching her, maybe trying to judge her mental state. She took a long drink of the beer, washing down the pizza. She had the urge to slam it, knowing it would shave the edge off her nerves.

“Tony’s got someone there who can see the two of you, but you’re not in any hurry,” said Sam. “Take your time.” After a moment he added, “You’re safe here.”

She put down her beer, the bottle clinking on the glass table, and found that her hand was shaking a little. She put it in her lap, self-conscious, aware of his gaze. His kindness was stripping away some of her armor, and she felt like he was waiting for her to say something that wasn’t just a cover.

“I’m so glad you weren’t there,” she finally said, quietly. “When it happened.” She looked at him, held his warm brown eyes. “I think they would have killed you.”

“Just wish I’d been there to help,” he said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t.”

She turned, wanting to give him a hug, but the twisted position was painful, and she gave up, wincing as she straightened her body.

“I’ve been there,” he said, full of empathy. “Busted ribs. It’s gonna take a while.” He pointed to his temple, tapped on it with his finger. “Stuff up here’s gonna take a while, too. You may not be feelin’ it yet, but it’d be normal to have some problems after what you went through. I know you know that already, after New Mexico… Greenwich… but this is a whole ‘nother ball game.”

He leaned forward a little, forearms resting on his thighs, his hands clasped together. “You don’t got a lot of options right now, people to talk to, but I want you to know you can come to me. You start havin’ trouble sleeping, havin’ intrusive thoughts… anything. Or you just wanna talk. I’m here for you.”

A little tear had snuck out of one of her eyes, and she swiped at it and smiled at him. She was trying to say, ‘thanks,’ but she couldn’t make the words happen, so she just picked up her beer again and fidgeted with the label.

Sam lowered his voice a little. “What about him— he doin’ okay?”

Darcy looked over to Bucky and Steve, still together by the windows. Steve’s arms were crossed over his chest and his head was turned to Bucky now, saying something she couldn’t make out.

“Yeah,” she said to Sam. “He’s doing all right, considering… He did have a shut-down at one point. I think it was sort of like what you guys said happened before, here at the Tower. He could barely talk. Didn’t want to move. He came out of it, though. I got him somewhere safe and he slept— when he woke up, he was okay again.”

“You know what triggered it?” asked Sam.

“Yeah… well, not exactly,” she said. “I think it was a memory of something bad he’d done.” She sighed. “I’m worried about him. Being here… I don’t think he would’ve come back here, if it wasn’t for me.”

“I’m glad he did,” said Sam. “We got some things we need to figure out.”

“Like what?” she asked.

Bucky and Steve were heading back over, and Steve answered for him: “Like how they knew he’d left the Tower… whether they tracked him to the other property, or found his location some other way… how they knew he was at the Tower in the first place…”

Sam said, “And those trigger words. They shot up the electronics in the security room, but Stark had backup of all the feeds, so we were able to run it back, see what went down. The camera in the safe room got everything. But we don’t know where the words came from— how they got them… whether there’s more.”

Darcy’s skin felt hot, thinking about watching the feed from the safe room— having to relive it. She knew, immediately, that she would never want to see it. She couldn’t imagine Bucky wanting to, either. He was standing next to the couch, staring at the table. She wasn’t sure how much he was listening.

“You should eat something,” she said to him.

“I think we should get to medical,” he said. “Get that sorted out, before we get too tired.”

“Okay, but I want you to eat a piece of pizza first,” she said stubbornly. “I’ve already had two. I’m good to go, as soon as I finish my beer.”

“Fine,” he said, lifting the lid on the top box. He pulled out a slice and folded it in half lengthwise to bite into it, foregoing a plate entirely.

“You see that?” said Steve to Sam, raising his eyebrows. “Real New Yorker there.”

“Oh God, not this again,” said Sam.

“What?” asked Darcy.

“Forkgate,” said Sam. When Darcy looked at him questioningly, he said, “Few years ago? The Mayor got caught eatin’ a slice of pizza with a knife and fork.”

“Guy must be a knucklehead,” said Bucky, making Steve grin. He polished off the slice quickly, wiped at his mouth with his flesh hand, and then said, “All right. Let’s go.” He held out his arm to her, so she could grab on and pull herself up.

“All right, all right— Jesus,” she said. She tipped back the bottle to finish off the beer, and then latched onto Bucky’s arm and pushed up with her thighs. “But I think we should take one of these boxes to our room after, in case you get hungry later. Where are we staying, anyway?”

“Dr. Foster set up one of the guest apartments for you right after I spoke to her this afternoon,” said Steve. “She’s having all your belongings brought over from the other place, but in the meantime she got you some basic things.”

“There, uh… there was some discussion of keeping Barnes isolated at first,” started Sam, and he put his hand up when Darcy opened her mouth to object. “For his protection,” he clarified. “But with most everyone cleared out of the Tower already, there’s not much point in puttin’ him in another secured area. The whole goddamned building is like one big cell right now— nobody gets in or out without bein’ cleared by Tony or Pepper, personally. If they’re tracking him, won’t make much difference if he’s in a room inside a room— they’ll still know he’s here.”

“Are we still in danger?” asked Darcy. “What do you mean, tracking him? How would they be doing that?”

“There could be something implanted in me,” said Bucky. “Maybe a part of the arm. Not likely, seein’ as how no-one’s come after me ’til now, but…”

“We can check for it anyway,” said Steve. “Should have, last time we were here. We never got that far…”

“We can discuss it tomorrow,” said Sam. “I know Tony’s got some ideas…”

“Medical’s on seventy-nine now,” Steve was saying, as they headed back to the elevators. Once they were all crowded in, he said, “You’ve already met Dr. Kayani.”

“That the lady or the man?” asked Bucky. “Don’t remember their names.”

“Lady,” said Steve.

“She been cleared?”

“Yeah,” said Steve. “Of course. Nobody’s gettin’ back in ’til they are.”

<<>>

The 79th floor housed the medical wing, but was mostly reserved for Tony’s upper-level workshop. No sooner had they gotten off the elevator, than they heard a breathless female voice call out, “Darcy?” and a petite woman with fine, shoulder-length brown hair began bounding toward them down the hallway, on a collision course with their group. She would have run smack into Darcy, knocking her over with an attack-hug, if Bucky hadn’t intervened— he moved his metal arm in front of Darcy, instinctively shielding her just in time, causing the other woman to pull up short and freeze, shoulders hunched defensively.

“She was gonna hurt you,” he said to Darcy, apologetically, and he backed up, his hands raised in a submissive gesture to placate the tiny woman, who was still frozen. She was as short as Darcy, but skinny, in a way that seemed not so much for fashion, judging by her utilitarian clothing, but because eating was an inconvenience. Her intelligent brown eyes were open now, fixed on Bucky: tracking his hands, especially the metal one.

“It’s okay,” said Darcy, the words meant for both of them. And then, to Bucky, “This is Jane.”

“Didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, his eyes still on the other woman as he lowered his hands. “She has fractured ribs… you gotta be careful.” He stepped back further, trying to give them space.

“I didn’t know,” said Jane. “I’m sorry.” She was still staring at him, wary, apparently afraid to move quickly lest she startle him— like someone assessing a wild animal. Darcy realized it was a lot like the way she’d behaved herself, when she’d first met him. It was depressing to see it from the other side— to think she’d ever made him feel that way.

“You guys go ahead,” said Darcy. “I’ll catch up in a sec.”

Sam nodded, turning and herding the other guys down the hallway toward medical. Jane kept her eyes on the men until they had turned the corner, and then let out a breath. “Holy crap,” she said. “That was a little scary.” She finally turned her attention back to her friend and said, “Can I really not hug you? I really want to hug you right now.”

Darcy answered by moving in to wrap her arms around the tiny woman. “Just don’t squeeze,” she said. Hugging Jane was like hugging a bony little bird. “You haven’t been eating,” she said. “I can tell— you’re even skinnier.”

“Tony’s robots are a poor substitute for a real assistant,” said Jane, “And the Tower’s AI is down indefinitely.” And then, “God, Darcy, I was so worried.” And then she did squeeze a little, but Darcy didn’t mind. “When Steve made it back… told us what happened…” Jane was sniffling a little, and it made Darcy tear up too. “I didn’t know if I should call your mom, or…”

“You didn’t, did you?” said Darcy, pulling away.

“No,” said Jane. “I didn’t want to, until we heard… something.”

Darcy sighed in relief, and rubbed at the tears on her cheeks. “Thanks. Do you know she never even acknowledged my text about the new job? That was months ago. And I know she’s fine… I saw her posting stuff on her Facebook… God, what even happened to my phone? That imposter bitch took it…”

“It was on the plane,” said Jane. “It got smashed in the crash. Are you okay? I mean, really okay?” She was holding both of Darcy’s hands in hers, which was something— between that and the hugs, it was the most touchy-feely she’d ever seen Jane, who was usually pretty stoic. It was hitting home, then, how worried she must have been.

Darcy looked down, not sure how to answer. “I don’t know. I’ve been trying not to think too much, you know? I’ll probably freak out tomorrow, when I realize I don’t have to worry about basic stuff like food or shelter anymore, and I can actually start to think about everything… Right now I just want to sleep. As soon as we’re done in medical we’re just gonna collapse in bed, I think…”

“What do you mean?” asked Jane, with a wary sound in her voice. She’d dropped Darcy’s hands. “They’re gonna isolate him, right?”

“No…?” said Darcy, her own voice sounding a warning. “Why would they? We’re safe here… at least, as safe as we can be…”

“He attacked you,” said Jane. “You and Steve. I saw Steve when he came in. He still had a mark on his throat—”

“That— that wasn’t him,” said Darcy. “That was… the Soldier. It wasn’t his fault. He’s not like that when… you know, when he’s himself. Not even close. God, do you think I’d be with him if he were?”

“What do you mean, ‘with him’? You haven’t—” Jane looked something between horrified and disgusted, and it pissed her off. Made her want to lie and say, _Why yes, Jane— I’ve been riding that salami from Day One. In fact, excuse me, because I’m gonna go hop on right now_ …

“No,” she just said instead, but didn’t bother to hide her irritation— and then she did say, “But believe me, the only thing holding me back is these stupid ribs.” She sighed. “He’s important to me. And I am to him.” _Please just drop it_. No such luck.

“He threw you out of a plane,” said Jane, like Darcy was an idiot.

“No, he didn’t,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. “He chose _not_ to throw me out. I fell. And he fricking _saved_ me, Jane. I think he almost died. I think he jumped out on purpose— risked his life. To save me. He didn’t have to, but he did.” And then her eyes welled up with tears, saying it out loud: “I would one hundred percent be dead right now, if not for him…”

The other woman was just standing there, staring, like her friend had been replaced by an alien doppelgänger, giving herself away with all the wrong answers, and Darcy finally lost patience with it.

“Look, I gotta go to medical. I need to get some decent pills before I lose my mind— I can’t even fucking breathe without pain right now. We’ll catch up later, okay? Are you gonna be working tomorrow?” She dropped her voice, muttering, “What am I saying, of course you’re working tomorrow.” In a regular voice she said, “Are you on a day schedule or night? What time have you been going to bed?”

“Bed around four, most nights,” said Jane softly. “Get up at ten.”

“Okay,” said Darcy. “I’ll— I’ll try and find you tomorrow, okay?” She was already turning to go, speaking over her shoulder, but then she fully turned around, walking backward for a moment. “Hey— there’s a huge stack of pizza in the fancy-ass lounge. Go eat some. Right now. That’s an order.”

Jane finally cracked a little smile. “Okay.”

“Okay,” said Darcy, in a stern voice, and then gave her a tired smile of her own. “See you later.”

“See you,” she heard behind her as she turned back around.

<<>>

She shoved down all the yucky feelings about the things Jane had said— the implication that she was being stupid, or at the very least, naive… or under some kind of spell. Well, maybe she was under a spell. The good kind— one she didn’t want to escape.

She found the medical wing; like everything else in the Tower, it was heavy on the glass and metal. It wasn’t her favorite style of decor, but at least the sterility made sense in a medical setting.

She could see Bucky sitting on an cushioned exam table, taking off his long-sleeved overshirt while Steve hovered nearby. Sam was faced away from them, talking to a short, dark-haired woman with eyeglasses, whom Darcy assumed was the doctor, even though she was dressed casually in dark-wash jeans and a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. They looked up when Darcy came in, and Sam said, “Here she is; she can probably tell you more.”

The woman came forward with a smile, and shook hands in greeting. “Hi— I’m Sara Kayani. I understand you’ve got some fractured ribs, and we’ll take a look at those in a minute, but we’re going to see what we can do for Mr. Barnes first. I’ve treated Steve’s injuries before, so I have some experience with the serum’s healing factor, but I was hoping you could tell me what the condition of the wounds were when you first saw them.”

“Sure,” said Darcy, moving to stand by Bucky. He’d gotten the overshirt off, and she took it from him, and then the T-shirt as well, once he’d pulled it off. He still had on the few layers of plastic that she’d insisted on wrapping him in, back at the Motel 6. He looked tired, and barely returned the smile she gave him.

“Let’s see what we’ve got,” said the doctor, pulling on some blue nitrile gloves.

“That whole side was just… raw,” said Darcy, as the doctor began to unwrap him. “I could see bone… ribs, I guess. And ripped muscles, I think. Just hanging off. A lot was just… missing. He had me rinse it all out with salt water.”

The doctor finished unwinding the plastic and then carefully peeled down the flat sheet, revealing the ever-transforming landscape of his back. Compared to how it’d been just days before, it looked really good— the new tissues had almost completely filled in the empty spaces, protected by the silver-skin stuff she’d noticed before, and she could even see fresh skin starting to creep its way toward the exposed areas. Darcy very deliberately didn’t comment on any of it, but Steve sucked in a breath and said, “Jesus, Buck.”

Dr. Kayani looked up at Steve a moment, over the tops of her glasses, a little close-lipped smile on her face. “I don’t think we need this many people in the room,” she said cheerfully, and Sam appeared a second later like a bouncer, moving Steve away from the exam table. The doctor reached up to pull a blue privacy curtain around the area.

“Hey Darcy,” she heard Sam say, on the other side of the curtain, “We’re gonna go back and eat some more of that pizza.”

“Okay,” she said. “I just sent Jane up there too. Tell her I’m gonna have you guys report back to me on how much she ate. She’s gotta have more than one slice.”

She heard Sam chuckle. “Will do,” he said. She saw his dark hand sneak through the gap in the curtain, holding what looked like a hotel key-card. “Almost forgot,” he said. “You’ll need this for the elevator. You can use mine for now. Bucky’s hand will work on the other panels.”

“Thanks, Sam,” she said. The yoga pants didn’t have any pockets, so she just held onto the card.

“Come and find us when you’re all done.” he said, and then she heard them shuffle out of the room.

The doctor was taking a close look at Bucky’s back. “I’ll get your palm into the system,” she said to Darcy. “Tony already created a profile for you, and I have a reader here in the office. Just remind me when we’re done here. The injuries occurred what, three days ago?”

It took Darcy a moment to catch up. “Uh, yeah— well, four days now, I think. It would have been Monday when…” _When I first kissed Bucky and then everything got really scary_ … She had a flash of Bucky, his warmth as his hips moved into her against the wall of the safe room, and then the gun was under his chin, a _click_ as he pulled the trigger…

The doctor straightened up. “It looks like it’s coming along just fine. You guys did a nice job of cleaning it, and the wrapping certainly helped. Are you feeling a lot of pain? I know when the nerves start coming back online it can be… challenging.”

“S’not too bad,” said Bucky. He cleared his throat. “First twenty-four hours weren’t so hot. Mostly just feels tight now. Itchy. Some tingling.”

“That all sounds about right,” she said. “If you’re not in a lot of pain, there’s not much more for me to do, other than apply a slightly nicer dressing,” she said. “And I have a topical you can try if you like, once this seals up a bit more— I developed it for Captain Rogers, actually. Helps with the discomfort when you have new skin growing rapidly.”

“That would be great,” said Darcy, when Bucky didn’t reply.

“Okay, then. Let’s wrap you back up. I’m going to clean and sterilize the area first— you likely don’t need it, but it can’t hurt.”

Darcy stood back and waited while the doctor cleaned him with some kind of sharp-smelling antiseptic, and then covered the area with a large, papery blue-and-white surgical pad, taping down the edges to hold it in place.

“All set,” she said, when she was done. “It’s healing so nicely— just keep doing what you’re doing. I wouldn’t recommend bathing while it’s still open, but you can certainly take a shower. I’ll give you some extra pads and tape, so you can re-dress it if you need to.”

She grabbed a stack of the packaged surgical pads and a roll of medical tape, and set them down on the exam table next to him. “Nice haircut, by the way,” she said, smiling.

“Thanks,” he said gruffly, as he pulled his T-shirt back on, carefully maneuvering it over the new dressing.

The doctor was rummaging through a little cabinet on the wall, and she turned to hand him a cylindrical jar, like the type that would hold face cream. “Here’s the topical,” she said. “Should help, down the road.”

“Appreciate it,” he said.

“Right,” said the doctor. “Your turn, Ms. Lewis.”

“It’s Darcy,” she said. “Can we do the hand thingie first? So I don’t forget.”

“Sure— takes less than a minute.” The doctor motioned her to a panel on the wall, swiped her card in a reader next to it, and put in a numerical password that brought up Darcy’s pre-approved profile. “Hold your hand up to the screen. Line it up with the dots.”

Darcy handed Sam’s key-card to Bucky, and then put her palm up to the screen, which had an outline of a hand on it; there were some lit-up red LED dots where the fingertips would be, and a few in the center. “Is it scanning my fingerprints?” she asked, as the lights flicked from red to green.

“Yes,” said the doctor, “and the veins in your palm.”

“Cool,” said Darcy.

“One more time,” said the doctor, and the process repeated, until all the lights were green again. “That’s it— you’re all set,” she said, saving the settings to the profile. “Let’s get a look at your chest now, and make sure nothing else is going on that we need to know about.”

Darcy started pulling up on the hem of her shirt, and Bucky asked her, “You want me to stay?”

“Yeah,” she said. She could already tell that she liked Dr. Kayani, but found she didn’t want to be alone with her. She wondered if this was going to be the new normal: trusting no-one.

The doctor said, “I’m going to take an X-ray, so you’ll need to remove your bra, if it has any metal parts.”

“Okay,” she said. Bucky could see she was having trouble getting the shirt off painlessly, and he moved to help her, lifting it over her head once she’d pulled her arms inside the sleeves. He unhooked her bra, so she wouldn’t have to twist her arms back.

“Thanks,” she said, handing the bra back to him, once she’d dropped the straps off her shoulders and lifted the garment away. She hugged herself, feeling exposed and chilly— her nipples pebbled up, and her arms erupted with goosebumps.

“Would you like a gown?” said the doctor. “I know it can be cold in here without something on.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Thanks.” She slipped her arms into the sleeves of the blue gown, and felt Bucky move her hair over and then tie the strings at the back of the neck, his metal fingers brushing against her skin.

“Is there a possibility you might be pregnant?” asked the doctor.

“Uh, no,” said Darcy. “Definitely not possible,” and she chortled— a ridiculous, nervous sound. She felt her face heat up, no doubt turning red; she felt like she was about twelve years old. The doctor had her move over to what looked like a photo booth.

“This is the digital X-ray machine,” she said. “I’ll position you for each view and then step out to operate the machine.” She took two different views: one from the back, and then another from the side— a painful position, with her arms lifted over her head. The results were instantly available on the screen, and the doctor encouraged Darcy to take a look while she read the images, pointing out what she saw.

“Your lungs look fine,” she said. She was moving her finger to trace across the bones, and then she said, “Uh huh, right here. One, two, three. All in a row.” She switched to the side view, and Darcy could see the damage then: it looked like little splinters coming off a slight bend at each of the spots the doctor was circling in red with her mouse. “They’re not too bad,” she said. “I know that’s not much consolation with the pain you’re in, but it’s still good news. I wouldn’t expect any complications from these. They’ll heal up nicely on their own. I’ll give you some medication so that you don’t restrict your breathing.”

“I was taking ibuprofen before, and it didn’t help much,” said Darcy.

“Yeah, I’ll give you something better than that for at least the next week, so you can do breathing exercises— it’s really important that you take a few nice, deep breaths at least once an hour. Try coughing every now and then, too.”

She’d sat down in a wheeled task-chair, and she zipped her way over to another desk, using a key to open a locked drawer. “I’m guessing you want to keep your identity on the down-low, so I’ll give you some of these for now; save you a trip to the pharmacy with a fake ID.” She reached into a ziplock bag full of tablets in blister-packs, then wheeled back to hand several of them to Darcy.

“Try to stay active,” she said. “You’re gonna want to just lie in bed, especially after what you’ve both been through— but try not to do that.” She lifted up her finger. “But no lifting! No pulling or pushing.”

“No tackle footfall?” Darcy joked.

“No sparring,” she said, and raised her eyebrows. Darcy nodded, unsure if she’d meant it literally, or if that was code for getting frisky with someone. She was too embarrassed to ask.

The doctor stood up and said, “I’ll let you get dressed. Come back and see me in a week so we can follow up on your pain. They’ll be moving me up to the new HQ pretty soon, but I’ll be here most days for the next few weeks.” She turned to Bucky then. “I forgot to ask— did you notice any benefit from the SSRI?”

“Don’t think so,” he said. “Doubt it was strong enough.”

The doctor _tsk_ ed. “Figured. Well, Sam thought it was worth a shot. We could go higher, if you wanted to try again…”

“Nah,” he said. “Don’t like takin’ stuff.”

“Your call,” she said, and then, “Take care.” She left them alone, drawing the curtain back around so that Darcy could get dressed. They could see her through the gap, going into the attached lab next to the exam room, the glass door swinging shut behind her.

Darcy faced away from Bucky so he could untie the bow at the back of her neck, and then he handed her the bra after she slipped off the blue gown. “I don’t even want to put this thing back on,” she complained. “Fucking torture device right now.”

“So don’t,” he said.

“Better not,” she said, “Just my luck, we’ll run into Mr. Stark and my tits will be hanging down to my knees. What a great first impression that would be.” She threaded her arms through the straps and Bucky hooked the back for her and then rubbed his flesh hand over her shoulder before helping her put her shirt back on.

There behind the privacy curtain, they were alone again for the first time since Coney Island, and she turned around and moved into the shelter of his body, wrapping her arms around him and pressing her face sideways against his chest. His own arms followed suit, enclosing her in a loose but comforting hold, and he tilted his face down into her hair. She closed her eyes and listened to his breathing, the thump of his heart, and took in a careful, deep breath of her own.

“You smell good,” she murmured.

“You’re kidding, right?” he said, his voice muffled by her hair.

“No,” she said, inhaling again, and smiled a little. “You smell like… Bucky.”

She was half-expecting some kind of smart-ass response, as per their flirty M.O., but he just stood there, holding her. “You doing okay?” she asked. “You’ve been really quiet.”

“Just thinkin’,” he said. “Tired.”

“Me too,” she said. “Can’t wait to lie down.”

“About that,” he said, and he hesitated. “You sure you still wanna double up? I can always stay in the room Steve set up for me.”

She looked up, wrinkled her eyebrows. “Yeah, I’m sure. Why? Don’t you?”

He sighed. “Just checkin’. People can do… things they normally wouldn’t do, when they’re in a tight spot. Hurtin’. Scared. Now that we’re here, safe… Wanted to make sure you still…”

She turned her face back into his chest, sideways, and tightened her arms around him. “Don’t be stupid.”

He felt him take a deep breath, in and out. “Just wanted to know if you were re-thinkin’…”

“I am,” she said. “I’m re-thinking a lot of things.” She looked up again, found his careworn eyes. “But this?” She freed her right hand so she could gesture, pointing between the two of them. “You and me? It’s like the only thing I’m _not_ confused about.”

He moved his hands up to either side of her face, holding her there while he leaned down to give her a single kiss, soft and sweet.

She smiled when he pulled back. “So now that that’s out of the way, lets go grab one of those pizzas and steal a six-pack or something. Find our room. Sleep for a week.”

<<>>

“Where’s Jane? Did she eat anything?”

They were back in the fancy lounge; Sam and Steve had polished off at least three extra-large pizzas by themselves, but the tiny astrophysicist was nowhere in sight.

“She made a plate and took off,” said Sam. “Said she had to get back to work.”

Under normal circumstances, Darcy would have taken it upon herself to follow up on that, tracking the other woman down and verifying that she’d actually eaten something, but at this point she didn’t really care. She also suspected that Jane was trying to avoid another encounter with Bucky, and Darcy didn't think she had the patience for that at the moment. She could deal with Jane tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep.

“So where’s our room? Is it okay if we disappear for a while? I want to sleep for about fifteen hours.” She walked around to the other side of the main bar, where she’d seen Sam get the beer, and squatted down to open one of the fridges underneath. “Score,” she said, pulling out a few green bottles. “I need a bag or something.”

“Here,” said Bucky. He was putting their medical supplies into the Kmart duffel bag. He came around and helped her load it up with cold beers, and then helped her stand up again.

“You guys’ll be up on eighty-four,” said Steve. “Did Kayani get your palm scanned?” he asked Darcy.

“Yup.”

“Room’s not coded right now— Sam and I already moved some things over for Bucky. Once you’re in, you can adjust the security on the electronic lock to restrict access.”

“Cool beans,” said Darcy. “Grab one of those pizzas,” she said to Bucky, who was shouldering the duffel bag.

They all stood there for a moment— silent, a little awkward. Finally Steve cleared his throat and said, “Real glad you guys came in. I hope— We can talk about it tomorrow, but I hope we can figure this out. Give you some better choices.”

“Is there a meeting set up or anything?” asked Darcy.

“Not yet,” said Sam. “Give us a ring when you guys are more rested. I gotta go back to HQ for a while, but we’ll meet up tomorrow and sort some of this out. Talk about what comes next. Steve’ll be here tonight, if you need anything. There’s a couple new Starkphones in your room— already got our numbers programmed in. Go ahead and set ‘em up, make ‘em your own.”

“Thanks Sam,” said Darcy. “For everything.” She turned to look at Bucky, where he stood waiting. “Let’s go check out our new digs.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To explain why I created an OC for the on-call doc at the Tower-- I don't have anything against Dr. Cho, whom I know usually fills this role in fics... but with her being a hard-core research scientist, I have a hard time imagining her being tasked with things like broken arms and lacerations and the odd surgery, so I figured I'd just make someone up for that job. Bucky recalls dealing with a couple of different doctors when he was at the Tower the first time, and she was one of them. The other one (a man) will not appear and is of no consequence to the story.


	24. Chapter 24

“Holy…”

Darcy was speechless. Almost.

They’d found their room, too tired to care or comment on what should have been a dramatic impact of luxury as they stepped inside. At this point, they really didn’t give a shit, as long as the place had a bed to collapse on.

And then Darcy stepped into the bathroom.

She realized that she’d never before been in an actual bath _room_. What she’d experienced before? Those were bath _closets_. Bath _cupboards_. This— the vast square footage that housed the washing, grooming and toileting facilities in the Stark Tower VIP guest suite… it was a fricking bath _studio_. It was bigger than Darcy’s first apartment.

“Change of plans,” she said roughly, moving toward the centerpiece— an enormous square jacuzzi tub, set into a raised marble dais and flanked by cushioned banquettes along a wall of windows with sweeping city views. Rolled towels and an array of designer bath products were laid out invitingly on the padded cushions at one end of the tub. “How do you turn it on?” she wondered aloud— there wasn’t even a visible faucet.

“Doll, you sure you want to take a bath right now? You were practically falling asleep in the elevator.”

“I’m sure,” she said firmly, and then, “Aha— here we go.” There was a touch-screen next to the banquette to the left of the tub, and Darcy found the controls there to turn the water on or off, set the temperature, operate the jets, select music (thank God there was more than just heavy metal), and lower the virtual shades to allow for more privacy, which was an appreciated touch. As beautiful as the views were, she didn’t need the entire city seeing her strip down.

Soft notes of tasteful jazz began to tinkle out of invisible speakers as the tub began to fill up from somewhere inside. None of it felt real. She heard him sigh— he was staring out the window— and then he said, “I’m not sure I deserve all of this.”

She didn’t hesitate, barreling through his melancholy: “Oh, you do. We both do. I mean, maybe not forever, but I’m sure as hell gonna enjoy it while we’ve got it. I’m gonna take one of my new pills, drink a beer, enjoy a soak, and then, when my drugs kick in, I’ll move to the bed and float away on a cloud of motherfucking bliss.”

He chuckled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Hard to argue with that plan,” he said, as he turned to look at her. “Here, let me help you.” She was eagerly trying to pull off her shirt, while simultaneously kicking her Walmart sneakers off. He helped her with the shirt and unhooked her bra for her, just like before, and then said, “Go ahead and get in; I’ll get your medicine for you.”

“And a beer!” she yelled, as he left the room. She uncapped a bottle of expensive-looking bubble bath with a scent described as ‘bergamot and ocean’, and dumped a generous amount into the swirling, steamy water. The fresh scent of oranges, jasmine, and something earthy— like moss— hit her, as soap bubbles began to rise in the water.

She hurried to shove off her tired yoga pants and underwear, bra, and socks, leaving them in a messy heap on the floor next to the sneakers. Getting her body up and over the wide edge of the tub wasn’t fun, but once she began to sink into the hot, fragranced water, there were no regrets. There were molded seating areas inside that allowed her to relax and lean her head back, her body supported, her tired flesh sinking under the heavenly bubbles. She sighed and smiled, eyes drifting shut, inhaling the spicy-clean scent that rose up around her.

“You look happy,” he said softly. She opened her eyes— he was standing there with a beer and one of the blister packs of pills that Dr. Kayani had given her.

“It’s amazing in here,” she said. “You should be naughty and come in.”

“Nah,” he said. “Lady did all that work puttin’ the new dressing on; should leave it be for now. Maybe tomorrow…”

“Boo,” said Darcy, but she smiled when she said it. “I’ll just have to come up with some other way to get you naked… Gimme my drink.”

“You sure you should be drinkin’ when you take this stuff?”

“I’m only gonna have one,” she said. “Then bed. It’ll be fine. Help me sleep.”

He squatted down next to the tub and pushed one of the pills through the foil packaging and set it into her open palm. She popped it in her mouth, and then held her hand out again to take the beer from him.

“Go get the pizza and sit in here with me. Keep me company while you eat.”

“Okay,” he said.

He came back a minute later with the pizza box, a beer for himself, and a bowl of red grapes. “Found this in the kitchen,” he said. “Your friend must’ve brought ‘em.”

Darcy snorted when she looked at the bowl of fruit. “Jane doesn’t even know what a grape _is_. Must’ve been Sam or Steve.”

“There’s more food in the fridge, too. And bags of clothes by the counter.”

“Guess we picked some pretty good friends, huh,” she said.

“Guess we did.”

<<>>

She woke up, and she was naked, dripping, swaying in his arms as he carried her through the dimly-lit apartment. “You passed out,” he said, when he noticed her eyes cracking open. He set her down on the edge of the king-sized bed and wrapped an enormous fluffy bath towel around her body, and lay another one down on the pillow before carefully lowering her down, and then covered her up with silky, clean sheets.

“Get in here,” she mumbled, in a fog, struggling to form words. She was already sinking into the warmth and comfort of the soft mattress and luxury bedding. “Need you.”

“In a minute,” he said.

She woke up again when he was sliding into the bed beside her in the dark, and she oozed over to wrap herself against his body, leaving the towel behind, all warm skin with nothing in between, and she sighed happily, her hands moving sleepily over his bare chest, down the trail of hair to his abdomen. “Been waiting so long for this,” she said, the words barely intelligible.

“Stop that,” he said, and she could hear his smile as he moved her hand away from where it’d drifted lower. “Not gonna make love to my girl when she’s half-asleep.”

“How ‘bout fourth-asleep?” she murmured. “Could probably wake up a bit more for that…”

“Shhh,” he said, taking her hand and moving it to his chest, where he rested his own on top of it, capturing it there. “Sleep.”

<<>>

The mattress dipped next to her, and she woke up, the room bright, her mouth disgusting with fuzzy, unbrushed teeth. She could tell that the lovely pill had worn off. Bucky was sitting on the bed, shirtless and freshly showered.

“How long did I sleep?” she asked. She started to sit up, and then stopped when the familiar pain stabbed into her.

“Bout fourteen hours,” he said. “Pill wore off, huh?”

“Yeah,” she said, blinking, feeling slow and stupid, but better rested than she’d been since they’d fallen. “That shit was great, though. Wow.”

“Well, take another one, and then do your breathing exercises, get cleaned up, eat something. I’m gonna meet Steve in the gym. Was hopin’ you could put a new one of these on for me.” He held out a fresh surgical pad and the roll of medical tape.

“Of course,” she said, trying to sit up again. And then, “I smell coffee.”

“Yeah, I’ve been up a while… just made a fresh pot,” he said. “You want me to bring you a mug?” He helped her to sit up, and arranged the pillows behind her so she could be more comfortable. “What,” he finally said, when he didn’t get an answer— she was just gazing at him like an adoring puppy.

“Uh, could you be any more awesome?” she said. “ _Yes_ , I’ll take a mug of the coffee that you made fresh.”

He pushed off the mattress, and she watched appreciatively as he walked away in the low-slung sweat pants. He came back a minute later, steaming mug in one hand, a glass of water in the other. He set the mug down on the bedside table, handed her the water, and pulled the pill pack out of his pants pocket. She took a look at the packaging finally, and said, “Oh, no wonder,” and then pushed one through the foil and took it, chasing it with a drink of water.

“No wonder what?” he asked.

“No wonder I felt so amazing last night. She gave me Oxy. That shit is strong. I hope I don’t get hooked.”

“Sounded like it was temporary,” he said. “Probably switch to something lighter after a week or so.”

“That’ll be fun,” she said.

He laughed at her sarcasm and then sat down on the edge of the bed again, turning so that she could put his dressing on. The new skin was spreading, covering more of the regenerating tissues. It was going to be rough and scarred, but it just seemed beautiful to her— a badge of survival, and of his bravery— evidence that he’d risked his life, to save hers.

“All done,” she said and he got up, taking the roll of tape with him.

He came back a minute later, pulling on a T-shirt, and handed her one of the new Starkphones. “Think I figured these out while you were still asleep. Programmed mine into yours. Message me if you need anything.” He leaned down to give her a kiss, but she blocked her stinky mouth with her hand, and he smiled and kissed her forehead instead. “You gonna be okay here? I’ll be gone an hour or two, I guess.”

“Be careful with your back,” she said, feeling like they were an old married couple, taking care of each other’s ailments.

“Just gonna jog or somethin’,” he said. “Not plannin’ on sparring.”

“Hey, speaking of that,” she said. “Do you think Dr. whats-her-name meant it literally when she said ‘no sparring’ yesterday? Or do you think she was telling me, ‘no hanky-panky’?”

“I took it to mean, no trainin’ in the gym ’til you’re feelin’ better,” he said.

“Really? I could swear she did this raised eyebrow wink-wink thing…”

“Nah,” he said. “Her clients are the hero type like Steve… get all bent outa shape if they have to give up trainin’ for a couple days. She probably has to yell at them all the time for overdoin’ it. She was tellin’ you not to jump back in the boxing ring just yet.”

“As if,” she said. “I’m practically allergic to exercise.”

“You know, you might wanna re-think that,” he said. “S’long as you’re re-thinkin’ stuff. Wouldn’t be a bad idea, take some self-defense classes, if you’re gonna be around me.”

She frowned. “Bucky… I’m not worried about—”

“Not for me,” he said, to clarify. “People who’d wanna get to me. Might wanna use you. Bein’ with me makes you a target.”

“Not sure some half-assed self-defense tips are gonna make much difference with that,” she said.

“Probably not,” he said, surprising her with how straightforward he was. “But it wouldn’t hurt none. It’d make me feel better, knowin’ you had a fightin’ chance if some guy tried to grab you on the street. Enough to buy a couple seconds, lose yourself in a crowd.”

She was quiet, imagining it, and he leaned down to give her another forehead kiss. “See you in a bit. Let me know if you need me; I'll come right back.”

<<>>

Once the pill kicked in, she was able to do some deep breathing, poked around in the kitchenette a little, investigating the food stores, and even managed a shower on her own. She looked through the bags of clothes their friends had left, but the women’s items were all too small, so she pulled her one change of clothes out of the duffel bag. She’d just finished dressing when her Starkphone chimed with an incoming message. She picked it up: the sender was ‘James B. Barnes.’ _Lunch meeting? 20 min. I’ll come up and get you._

She smiled at the formal name, and thumbed out a quick response: _Sounds good_. She automatically started typing out, ‘love you,’ but stopped. She didn’t want the first time she said it to be so offhand, or in a text. Well, the first time she could be sure he’d heard it… she didn’t know if the time on the jet counted; it’d been more of a desperate proclamation then, a budding truth and a hope to somehow save him, whether or not she lived. It was different now— a conveying of her feelings, but also of wanting to be with him… wherever it took them. A commitment.

She backed up the text, deleting the words after ‘sounds good’, and replaced them with a smooch-face emoji. She sent it and then went to the phone’s list of contacts, editing the entry for ‘James B. Barnes’ to simply read, ‘Bucky.’

<<>>

The conference table was piled high with gigantic submarine sandwiches from some Italian place, each wrapped in parchment paper and labeled with black marker. Sam and Steve were leaning in, reading out the labels. A large pitcher of water was on a serving tray, next to a cluster of empty glasses.

“I hope those are okay for everyone,” said a female voice. Darcy turned to see a tall, willowy woman in chic, plum-colored business-wear enter the room. “We’re still working on re-authorizing the food-service staff, so Tony sent out for those.” Her fine, strawberry-blonde hair was in a simple ponytail, with tidy, straight-cut bangs framing her freckled face. Darcy recognized her as Virginia “Pepper” Potts, CEO of Stark Industries.

“You must be Darcy Lewis,” she said, holding out her hand. Darcy shook it, trying not to show how intimidated she felt, well aware of the power wielded by the formidable woman in front of her. Though they’d spoken over the phone and through email, being in her presence was an entirely different experience. But something about her seemed so immediately kind-hearted— open and genuine— that Darcy found herself quickly relaxing.

“And Sergeant Barnes,” she said next, turning to Bucky. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. We were all so relieved to hear that the two of you were safe. Tony and I feel sick about what happened— that we failed to provide a safe environment for you at the upstate property.”

“It’s Bucky,” he said, and cleared his throat. “And please— don’t apologize. I, uh… I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, ma’am.”

“Please, call me Pepper,” she said, and then invited them all to sit down. “Go ahead and eat something. We’re still waiting for Tony and Natasha. Clint is following up on a lead, so he won’t be joining us.”

“What kind of lead?” asked Steve, as he unwrapped one of the sandwiches. Bucky grabbed a couple of them, passing one to Darcy, as they found seats next to each other at the big table.

“A Jane Doe was found upstate yesterday,” Potts was saying. “Pulled out of a river. The body… it had a prosthetic leg.”

Sam put down his sandwich. “Aw, hell.”

Ms. Potts was nodding, her face serious. “Clint flew up to see if he could make a positive ID.”

The conference-room door opened, and Natasha Romanov— the Black Widow— came in, circled the table without making eye contact with anyone, and took a seat. She looked smaller than before, dressed in a casual black warmup suit, and Darcy was surprised to realize how tiny the woman really was— like Jane, but imbued with power. It was impressive, that someone her size could take on the Winter Soldier single-handedly, and almost succeed. She declined a sandwich, instead sipping at a white to-go cup of hot tea.

“If that’s the real Wells’ body up there,” started Bucky.

“Yeah,” said Sam. “Things just got even uglier.”

“What do we know about them, anyway?” asked Darcy. “Are they Hydra?” She was picking at the sandwich, just pulling out individual ingredients to nibble at.

Steve shook his head. “Don’t think so. We’ve been over the footage, every second of it. They were tough, but they lacked the sophistication and the… well, the coldness we’ve seen from Hydra. This was something different.”

“That wasn’t cold?” asked Darcy incredulously.

“She let you live,” said Romanov. “I would have expected Hydra to have Barnes shoot you or strangle you, just to be sure… and to prove a point. It was sloppy. An error of judgment.”

Darcy blinked at the woman, trying not to take it personally that she’d just characterized her continued existence as a fuck-up.

“I agree,” Bucky was saying, “but why would they have the words? How would they get their hands on those, if they weren’t affiliated somehow?”

“Remember Tasha picked them up, coming in from somewhere else,” said Steve. “And then in the room, the leader— she said something to Bucky— to the Soldier, I mean— in Arabic, but she was speaking clumsily. She was reading a script.”

Bucky was shaking his head. “I don’t speak Arabic.”

Romanov said something to him then, in that same liquid but throaty language that Darcy had heard in the safe room, but Bucky just shook his head. “Not a clue,” he said.

“So maybe you’ve just got a few words and phrases of it, key triggers, but no fluency,” said Sam.

“About that,” said Darcy. “What are we supposed to do about the words? How can we know what’s still in his head, how he could be triggered? Is he supposed to walk around with headphones on for the rest of his life?”

“Considered it,” said Steve. “Not headphones, exactly, but an in-ear device he could wear, that he could activate to block sound if he came under attack. But it wouldn’t protect him from something short, like a trigger of just one or two key words.”

“Is that even possible?” she asked. “To disable someone with a single word?”

“They had me for seventy years,” said Bucky. “I wouldn’t wanna assume it’s not.”

“What did she say, anyway?” asked Darcy. “The Arabic?”

“It was a question-and-answer riddle,” said Romanov. “About the deeds that men do… We think it was a safety check, to make sure it was the Soldier answering, and not Barnes pretending to comply.”

“I’ve got some ideas about how to deal with the triggers,” said Sam, “but it’ll take time. Lotta work. And no guarantees.”

“Not afraid of work,” said Bucky. “And nobody’s got guarantees. I’ll take what I can get.”

Sam nodded, and though he wasn’t smiling, Darcy could tell he was pleased.

“Steve said something about suspicious activity,” said Bucky. “Here at the Tower.”

Ms. Potts spoke up then. “Yes. There were a few deaths— a car accident… also a heart attack, and a suicide. We’d thought them random tragedies, but now we’re taking a closer look.”

“In the meantime,” said Steve, “I think we should move ahead and take a look at your arm. Make sure there’s not something going on in there, that someone could be tracking you with, as unlikely as that seems.”

“Unlikely because…” said Potts, making it a question.

“Buck was livin’ on the street for most of three years,” said Steve. “It wouldn’t make sense to wait until he was here, or even up at the cabin, to make a move.”

“Or after,” said Darcy. “We were totally vulnerable, both of us hurt… if they were tracking him…”

“Why not just take it off anyway,” said Bucky, interrupting. “Destroy it. Or let Stark have it, dismantle it as he pleases. Why risk it, if there’s any possibility of a connection. Whether it’s a tracker, or some other way of findin’ me.”

“Tony’s lining up a prosthetist,” said Steve. “He knows a guy over at Mount Sinai… guess he’s hired him as a consultant before. He was thinking you could come up with a design together, a hybrid…”

“That’s something to figure out later,” said Bucky. “We could get the arm off now, in any case.”

Steve sighed. “It’s up to you, but—”

“How soon could he do it?” said Bucky.

“How ‘bout tonight?” They all turned at the new voice, and Darcy saw that Tony Stark had entered the room. He was shorter than she’d expected, and dressed more like a teenager than a billionaire, in scuffed jeans, a Black Sabbath T-shirt, and a well-worn navy hoodie. He was wearing rose-tinted fashion eyewear, and was looking around the assembled group without actually making eye contact with anyone.

“Tony,” said Steve in greeting.

Bucky cleared his throat, not looking at him, and said, “You could really do it as soon as tonight?”

“Why not,” said Stark. “I asked Kayani if she could stay late, assist with the gooey stuff, if need be. I’m good for the Terminator parts. How’s four o’clock work for you?”

Bucky pushed himself up. “Lets do it.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Steve, standing now too. “Aren’t we being a little hasty? We could still just scan it, see if there’s something in there—”

“I’ve had three years to think about what I want to do to this thing,” said Bucky. “It ain’t hasty for me. Even if there’s no tracker, no connection, it’s still causin’ damage.” He looked pointedly to Steve. “Hell, I just about killed you with it, less’n a week ago.” He didn’t mention Darcy’s shoulder, but she knew he was thinking about that, too.

“That wasn’t—” Steve started to say, but Bucky interrupted him.

“I say let’s get it off. Why wait? The sooner, the better.”

Everyone was quiet— even Sam, whom Darcy had expected to speak up on Bucky’s behalf, but he was just quietly eating his sandwich, letting Bucky handle it.

Darcy looked at Bucky; he was having a stare-down with Steve. “It ain’t even my arm,” he said to him. “Not gonna cry over it.”

“Right,” said Stark. “I’m gonna go prep with Kayani. Barnes, meet me in medical at four.” He stopped and tilted his head, finally noticing Darcy. “Oh, hey! Nice to finally see you in person, Nicky.”

“It’s Darcy,” she said, rising to offer her hand.

Instead of shaking it, he held out a small bag of dried nuts. “Almond? They’re raw; no salt.”

“Uh, no thanks,” she said, and pulled her hand back, awkwardly looking around. She saw Ms. Potts smile sympathetically, and then she stood too, and spoke to the room. “I’ll keep you updated if we get any more information about the incidents with the staff last week. Natasha? You’ll let us know if you hear from Clint?”

Romanov inclined her head, saying nothing, and Potts said, “I need to get back to work, but please, the rest of you, stay and eat. Tony, can I talk to you for a second? Outside?”

The two of them left, and Darcy wasn’t sure if the meeting was over or what— Bucky sat down and said, “Pass me another one, would ya?” and Sam leaned up to grab a wrapped sandwich from the tray, which was nearest to him now.

“You want hot peppers?” Sam asked.

“Sure, why not,” said Bucky, and he caught the sandwich Sam tossed at him and started to unwrap it, acting like it was no big deal that he’d just made plans to remove one of his limbs later that afternoon. She tried to see it as a positive— at least he hadn’t shut down again at the sight of Mr. Stark.

“Darcy.” It was Romanov, her voice low, with a bit of a scratch to it. “What else can you tell us about Wells… the imposter. We didn’t have feed from the hallways, or the jet. Is there anything she said that might tell us more about who she is? Who she’s working with?”

Darcy sat down and pressed her lips together. She’d been avoiding actively going over the memories, but there were some things that kept coming back to her, in spite of herself.

“In the hallway— or the gym— I can’t remember which… One of the… the rifle guys, he asked if they were taking me with. The lady, she said something about lambs. ‘They always need more lambs’, something like that. It scared me.”

Darcy could feel Bucky’s tension next to her. She didn’t like him having to hear it, even if he couldn’t remember.

“That’s good,” said Romanov. “Good detail. Anything else?”

Darcy shook her head. “Not really. It’s all… it’s like I can’t remember anything except the feelings… how scared I was. For Bucky. For me and Steve. And wanting that bitch to die.” She could feel her eyes stinging, and she tried to suck it up, not wanting to cry in front of Romanov.

She felt Bucky’s hand move to her leg, under the table, squeeze it. She was trying to think, aware of Romanov watching, missing nothing. “I guess the thing that strikes me is that in spite of all her gloating, she seemed disappointed. Like, she knew she wasn’t gonna get to keep him,” she said, looking at Bucky. “It was temporary. I don’t remember what she said, exactly, but I had that feeling.”

Romanov tilted her head. “That fits my assessment as well.” She stood up, and without another word, walked to the door and exited, leaving her tea behind.

They were all quiet for a minute, the only sound the crinkling of the parchment paper as Steve and Sam unwrapped more sandwiches.

“Are meetings here always this fucked up?” asked Darcy.

“Pretty much, yeah,” said Steve, rubbing his forehead.

<<>>

“What’re you thinking about,” she said. They were lying on their backs on the bed, fully clothed, staring up at the ceiling. It was two-thirty in the afternoon— only an hour and a half until he was scheduled to report to medical. She was on his flesh-and-blood side, her hand entwined with his, her thumb running along his index finger.

He didn’t answer at first, and when he did, he didn’t look at her. “That poor goddamned woman. Wells— the real one. She was gonna come out there, try to help me. Got killed for it. Wasn’t even personal. They just needed her out of the way so that other lady could take her place…”

Darcy rolled onto her side, releasing his hand and moving her other arm to stretch across his body, her head resting against his chest. The new pills were wonderful, giving her much more freedom to move and breathe, as long as she didn’t do anything sudden, and she intended to take advantage of it. “We don’t know for sure yet—”

“Gotta be her,” he said. “God, can you think how Barton must feel right about now? He recommended her… s’like he pointed his finger, and—”

“Nobody’s responsible but the people who did it,” said Darcy. “They didn’t have to kill her. They could’ve tied her up or something. Put a bag over her head. Let her go, once they had you. It was just easier for them this way. Easier to just… erase her.”

He moved his arm up, covered his eyes with his hand. “Even when I’m not doin’ anything… people’re still dyin’ because of me…” She held him a little tighter, not saying anything, letting him talk. “Maybe I shouldn’t be takin’ off the arm,” he said. “Maybe I should be usin’ it to fight. Tryin’ to run away… have some kinda normal life… it’s a fool’s dream…”

“Do you need more time to think about it?” she asked. “You don’t have to go, if you’re not ready. I mean, it was kind of sudden. I know you said you’ve been thinking about it for three years, but… I remember back in the kitchen, when I first asked you about it… God, that seems like forever ago… even then, you seemed kind of… I don’t know, ambivalent or something.”

He uncovered his face then, tipped his head down to look at her, where she was nestled into his body. “Only thing I’ve been unsure of, is what to do once it’s off. Do I put on a new one? A new weapon? Or try to pretend I ain’t what I am— a machine, made for fightin’… Even without the arm, I’m still strong, can heal fast. There’s stuff I could do…”

“But you didn’t choose it,” she said. “You’re not Steve; you didn’t volunteer for this life. Steve wanted it. Risked his life for a chance at it. It’s not the same. It’s like… I know it’s a dumb analogy, but just because someone’s six-foot-five doesn’t mean they have to play basketball. Even if it lets the coach down.”

“Yeah, but we’re talkin’ about savin’ lives. Not playin’ basketball don’t mean life or death for anyone. Maybe I go back to bein’ on Steve’s team, maybe a bunch of people get to live, who wouldn’t have, otherwise.”

She was quiet a moment. It was noble, what he was getting at, but in truth she just wasn’t feeling it. After everything he’d been through, he of all people deserved to just… opt out. To seek fulfillment elsewhere, without feeling guilty about it. To find another way to serve.

“I don’t think it’s selfish,” she said, “to keep looking for that elusive thing… you know, it’s corny or whatever, but maybe you’re looking for something like a… a _calling_ … a way to make a difference, but also be… complete.” She moved her hand up to his jaw, ran her thumb along the edge of it. “I think I know you enough to say this: killing isn’t your calling… even if it’s for the good guys.”

She moved her hand back down, wrapped her arm around him again. “I also think it’s okay to just want to… live. Without the burden of being extraordinary. I mean, look at me: what if I said I just wanna do my lame-ass job, eat potato chips, watch stupid movies on Netflix and have some awesome sex now and then? And then what if I found out that if I died tomorrow, my heart could save the kid who grows up to be the next Gandhi or something, and I’m just sitting here wasting it… If I knew that, would I step in front of a bus? Would you want me to? I don’t know… Maybe it is selfish, but I have a right to just live. Everyone does.”

He rolled over then, so that he was almost on top of her, his metal hand keeping his weight from pressing down on her. “Don’t go steppin’ in front of any bus,” he said, his voice low. “I’m afraid I can’t spare you, so the world’s just gonna have to do without the next Gandhi.” His face was so sweet, so tender, it made her heart ache, and she exhaled, shutting her eyes just before he leaned down to give her a kiss, his lips soft and warm.

And then he pulled back and broke into a smirk. “Awesome sex, huh? Who you plannin’ on doin’ that with?”

“Oh, some guy,” she said playfully, reaching her thumb up to rub at the dent in his chin. “I haven’t known him long, but I’ve got a pretty good feeling about the direction it’s going.” She heard the plates in his wrist move and adjust, next to her head, and she turned to look at it. “It’s gonna be weird, not hearing that anymore. I’m sort of used to it.”

“You gonna miss it?” He flopped back down, this time holding his metal hand in front of his face, turning it back and forth, rubbing the fingers and thumb together.

“Honestly?” She rolled back onto her side to face him, her jaw propped in her palm, elbow in the mattress. “A little. I mean, this is the only ‘you’ I know. But we can design a better one. One that you actually like.”

“You don’t think I’m makin’ a mistake? Steve obviously does… even after what I did to him…”

Her face fell a little. “He told you?”

“I asked him. This morning, in the gym.”

She was quiet as she thought about it. “If it doesn’t feel like it’s part of you, and you want it gone, then take it off. Let Stark find the tracker, if there is one. Move on. Taking it off… it’ll just give you more options.”

She lay down against his chest again, and he put his arms around her— both of them. “I might miss this, though,” she said. “Feeling all wrapped up in you. We should come up with a plan for a replacement. Talk to that prosthese— prothet— that arm guy that Tony knows. Start designing Arm Two-point-oh.”

She reached over to touch the metal hand, threading her fingers through his. “The other stuff? What comes next? You don’t have to figure that out today. If you decide you want to be on Steve’s team, you can build a superhero arm. If you wanna go live in the country and raise goats, then we’ll build something else. Or maybe you’ll do both, and have an arm for each thing. You don’t have to define yourself by it.”

She shifted herself over so that she was lying completely on top of him— something she hadn’t done before— and as she moved her hips a little, settling into him, she could feel his body responding. “Did kind of ruin my plans for tonight, though. That awesome sex I was talking about? Probably not gonna happen now…”

He smoothed his hand over her hair, and then down her body to the curve of her backside, which was gloriously outlined by the skintight yoga pants. “Have to take a rain check,” he said. She smiled as he squeezed her ass, looked up to see him closing his eyes as he bit his lip in a grin, pressing his hips up a little.

“On the other hand,” she said, sliding back down to his side, her hand trailing lower to feel him through his sweatpants, “Just because we don’t have time for the whole enchilada…”

She was running her hand up and down his length, slowly, enjoying the feel of him as he filled up, and he was breathing through his words as he said, “Wha? Enchilada… is that… slang for…”

“Your dick?” she asked, and looked up to see him grinning again, and God, he was beautiful like this, flush with pleasure, his cares put aside for the moment…

“Nope,” she continued, “But I think we can do something about that…” She tugged on his pants, asking permission, which he gave by lifting his hips a little so she could pull them down; he helped her, pulling one leg out and then using his foot to shove them the rest of the way off, and then he tried to roll into her, but she pushed him back flat again, more aggressive than she’d been capable of before, palming him again through his boxer briefs as she slung one of her legs over him…

He made a happy sound in his throat as she stroked him through the thin fabric, and then she pulled down on the waistband of the briefs, freeing him, which was a surprise, judging by his intake of breath, but not an unpleasant one…

She put her hand on him first, feeling the silky glide of him as she moved, and then, with a mischievous smile, slid down along his legs until she could put her mouth on him too, just a kiss at first, next to her hand— and he arched and made a different kind of sound, needy, his mouth falling open…

“Jesus,” he hissed, and his flesh hand grabbed for her, found her arm, squeezed it as she became bolder, warmed him with her lips and her tongue, careful not to pull back too much on the delicate skin— she’d realized in the shower that he was uncircumcised, which hadn’t been an issue for her hand, but this was new territory now that she was down there with her mouth, not entirely sure how best to please him.

“Tell me what you like,” she whispered, after a slow swipe up the underside and a gentle up and down with her hand. “I’ve never done this for an un-snipped guy… don’t wanna mess it up…”

“Doll,” he said, almost whispering too, shivering, and then he gasped, unable to speak for a second. “Said it… before…” He was almost panting. “No way… you’re gonna… mess it up.” He was squeezing her arm again, and she was swirling slowly around his girth before taking him partway in again, still moving her hand at the same time, languorously, paying attention to all of his noises…

She was finding that with the natural glide of the extra skin, it took very little effort compared to what she was used to, and she was able to relax and experiment and just enjoy pleasing him as she figured out the mechanics of the foreskin— fascinated by the slide of it, but mindful of the heightened sensitivity of the tip that was still half-hidden inside, quickly finding that it was just as delicate as her own most tender spot, and that he favored her taking it in her mouth with the skin still sliding over it, wrapped and wet and warm…

He was so receptive to her efforts that she felt no need to perform or tick any boxes, no achievements to earn other than making him feel good with the slow caress of her mouth… learning his body, treating it like that sacred thing she’d come to see it as, while he re-learned what it felt like, to have his body loved so explicitly, and with so much care…

She could tell when he got close, his breathing more erratic, his hips almost shaking, and she could feel him holding back, not wanting to hurt her by thrusting up, and she moved her other hand to his hipbone, squeezing it, as if to say, _It’s okay; I’ve got you_ … and he was getting louder, and she loved it, hearing him unburdened, and he was trying to speak, to warn her as the full length of him hardened even more, the skin thinning as he reached his peak…

She’d just pulled off when he cried out as he let go, and she looked up in time to catch the expression on his face as his head tipped forward, his eyes squeezed shut, mouth open as he rode the release… and she wanted to burn it into her memory, the way he looked in that moment, utterly unguarded… vulnerable, beautiful, _happy_ …

He fell back onto the pillow and tugged on her with his flesh hand, and she crawled back up his body, into his waiting arms. She rested her head on his chest, fully content as he brought himself back down, his breathing ragged, closing his mouth to swallow and then exhaling roughly.

He sat up for a second to rip the underwear the rest of the way off, using the fabric to quickly clean himself, and then tossed them aside before collapsing back down, still trying to catch his breath as he gathered her to him again. He almost seemed stunned, and she circled her hand on his chest, a soothing motion, and said, “You okay?”

His eyes were shut, but he smiled then, and for a moment he looked so young… his face answering her, glowing… and then he rolled into her, found her lips and kissed her, long and deep, not caring about his own salty taste on her tongue, and she bent a leg over his hip, pulling him in, and they lay there together a minute, just enjoying it… and then she giggled, and he said, “What,” and she could feel his smile on her mouth as he kissed her again.

“You’ve got a shirt on, but no pants,” she said. “It’s funny.”

“Yeah?” he said. “Should I head down to medical like this? Put everyone at ease right off the bat?”

She giggled again, delighted. “You want me to dare you to?”

“Better not,” he said, and he was holding her face, kissing all the little parts of her— the top of her lip, her jaw, her eyelids when they fluttered closed. “If memory serves, I’m a sucker for a good dare…”

“I won’t do it,” she said. “Don’t wanna share this view with anyone. You’re all mine.”

He slowed down then, rubbing his nose against the side of hers, kissing her long and tender, rubbing her skin with his stubble, and said, “Wish we had time for the… what you said. The whole…”

“Later,” she said. “Something to look forward to, after.”

“I won’t be able to hold you like this,” he said, rolling her on top of his body again, his arms wrapping around her.

“I’m not worried,” she said. “We’ll figure it out.”

He was quiet a moment, stroking her hair, and then he said, “I want you there. With me. When they do it. If, you know… they let you.”

“Are they gonna knock you out?”

“Don’t know,” he said. “Don’t need to. Hydra never did.”

She turned her head so that her cheek was against his chest. Listened to his heart. She didn’t want to think about it, Hydra hurting him. Cutting him up, indifferent to his pain. “They’re not Hydra,” she said. “They don’t want to hurt you.”

“Will you stay? Either way? If you can?”

“Of course I will,” she said. She curled her fingers on his chest, turned her head to kiss him, right in the center, where he had that dusting of hair.

“I should get cleaned up,” he said, and then smirked. “Put on some pants.”

She giggled again, and then her face fell and she said, “Fuck,” rolling off of him. “I totally forgot to talk to Jane.” He’d followed her, rolling onto his side, watching her face with concern. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m sure she’s so busy, she probably didn’t even notice. I’ll send her a text while you’re cleaning up.”

“You should eat something too,” he said. “Don’t know how long this is gonna take. Could go quick, could be hours.”

“I’ll bring a six-pack and some Cheetos,” she joked.

He leaned over her then, stroked her face, his own gaze soft, full of affection. “Thanks,” he said.

“For what?” She grinned then, unable to resist. “Please say, ‘your awesome BJ skills’…”

He laughed a little, but then he relaxed his face again and said, “For makin’ this easier for me.” His voice was soft. “I’m glad you’re gonna be there.”

“Hey— you want me there, I’m there.” She turned her face to kiss his thumb, staring into his beautiful grey-blue eyes. “They’d have to drag me away.”


	25. Chapter 25

“General anesthesia’s a given, of course, for something like a shoulder disarticulation,” said Dr. Kayani, “but that’s for a typical patient and a flesh-and-blood limb… I don’t think it’s necessary here, unless you’d prefer to be out.”

They were gathered in the operating suite of the medical wing: Kayani, Bucky, Darcy, and Mr. Stark, who hadn’t said a word to them since he’d arrived; he was completely absorbed in the scans of the arm that Kayani had taken, tapping and swiping at them on the ghost-like virtual screens in the air.

Bucky was waiting, shirtless, while Kayani raised the back of the operating table and lowered the legs, so he could sit comfortably upright. It looked like he was about to get his teeth cleaned, not get his arm removed; the only evidence of something more major in the works was the array of tools, both medical and mechanical, laid out— everything from simple surgical forceps to a hand-held laser drill.

Darcy looked uneasily at the tools. “Do you anticipate any discomfort?” she asked.

“We just don’t know,” said Kayani. “Based on what we already know, and what I can see in the scans… and his own description of the prosthesis’ tactile system… I don’t expect him to experience what we’d characterize as pain. Sensation, yes. Pressure. But none of this should hurt— unless we have to go into the structures where they preserved his living tissues.”

“Steve said he might have synthetic muscles in the arm…”

“I don’t think so,” said Kayani. “It looks to me as though everything from the shoulder joint down is artificial— metallic structures, or electrical components that power and operate the limb. We can see now that they replaced most of the bones of the upper left quadrant with metal— probably to support the weight of the arm— and at least some of the tendons are scanning as synthetic… but as far as I can tell, all the muscle groups in his torso are still his own. Of course we won’t know for sure, until we get in there…”

Bucky slid back into the chair, and she made some more adjustments as she spoke. “It could be that they had more trouble with trying to partially sever them, if they kept regenerating— you’ve seen for yourself how remarkable his regrowth is. And, at least in the beginning, even Hydra or SHIELD wouldn’t have had the technology to create synthetic muscle to allow for the type of speed and dexterity necessary for… well, for an agent like himself.” She pulled out an armrest on Bucky’s metal side, and had him position the forearm of the prosthesis on it. “But we have no way of knowing how much they updated, what was replaced or improved over the years…”

“So there’s real muscle under there?” asked Darcy, pointing to the metal that butted up to the scar on his chest.

“I believe so,” she said. “Not in the arm, but everywhere else. Depending on how they secured it to the artificial structures underneath, we may be able to leave it alone— mechanically remove the arm, and call it a day. In an… unaltered human arm, you’d have muscle fibers attaching here—” she pointed to a spot on his upper arm with a pen— “and here, and they’d need to be severed. If we get in there and find that his deltoid is still operating as a functional muscle group— if it’s attached to the artificial humerus, or whatever core structure they created— we’ll have to detach it and perform a myodesis elsewhere. There’s just too much in the way to know what’s going on, without looking inside.”

“And if you have to do that?” asked Darcy, not understanding everything, but getting the gist of it.

“Then I’d want to give him some pretty significant pain-blocking medication. At least a strong local anesthetic… something to get us through the procedure without his having to feel it.”

“Okay,” said Darcy. Bucky had been silent since they’d entered the room, complying wordlessly while Kayani scanned him, but the tension in his body had increased significantly once he’d sat down in the upright operating chair. She felt the urge to move in, place her hands on him in a comforting gesture, but held back, wanting to follow his cues. At the moment, he seemed to have fallen into some sort of _compliant subject_ mode, which made her uneasy, but was probably just instinctive for him at this point.

“You all right?” she asked him.

“Last time I was sittin’ in a chair, havin’ the arm worked on…” He shut his eyes. “I think Pierce was there…” His hands clenched and then relaxed.

“You can lie down, if that makes it better,” said Kayani. “We may need to do that anyway, to work on the posterior. Or we can just try to put you out completely. We do have something that works on Captain Rogers, at least for limited-duration procedures.”

“Let’s try it this way, first,” he said, and took a deep breath. “I’ll be all right. Thanks, uh… for lettin’ Darcy stick around,” he said, and then she did move in and take his hand, the flesh one, and gave it a little squeeze.

“It’s not a problem,” said Kayani. “We’re not dealing with a typical surgery here; none of the usual concerns with contamination.” Her voice was professional but easygoing, responding to his tension. “Are you ready to get started?”

“M’ready,” he said, and he flexed his metal hand again, on the armrest, and then turned his head to look at it, a dent between his eyebrows, as if he was finally realizing that he was moving that hand for the last time.

“Mr. Stark?” Kayani said. They all looked at the billionaire, who was still raptly studying the scans; he’d ditched the pink fashion glasses for a pair of safety goggles, which were pushed up and resting on top of his head. Kayani tried again: “Tony? We’re ready to start.”

<<>>

They began by removing the outer plating from the shoulder to the wrist, revealing an underlayer of flexible mesh-like metal molded over the workings underneath. It was densely woven, like fabric, and was the same material to which the Hydra technicians had crudely grafted his skin along the seams. Stark was making delicate cuts in the mesh with a laser saw so they could peel it back, like a surgeon slicing into human skin.

“I think we need to leave that part intact,” Kayani was saying, as they neared the shoulder. “He doesn’t have enough skin to make a conventional flap if we keep the scapula— we’ll just have to leave some of this mesh on, until a decision’s made about a socket or other means of attachment for a replacement prosthesis…”

“You think that stuff’s waterproof?” asked Darcy, leaning in. She was having a hard time restraining her interest in the arm— it had fascinated her from the beginning.

“It seems to function like an artificial skin,” said Kayani. “I imagine it would protect everything inside from the elements. And its tensile strength is significant— well beyond the tech used in conventional medicine.”

“How often did you have to charge the arm up?” asked Stark. He was still cutting through the mesh, but as more of the inner workings were exposed, it was clear where his true interests lay.

“Not sure,” said Bucky. “Was probably part of normal maintenance after a … a job. Wasn’t always conscious for that.” Darcy could feel herself tense up, now that she knew Stark’s parents had been one such ‘job’, but Stark seemed to be completely detached from his emotions, his focus solely on the tech in front of him.

“But you’ve been out for three years now?” he said. “And everything’s still running?”

Bucky’s forehead pinched together. “There were times… sometimes on the street, ‘specially at first… I was sleepin’ a lot, not like now…” He looked down to the prosthetic hand, rolled the fingers. “Was almost like… when your fingers get cold. Stiff. Reminded me of the war…”

“Some system of kinetically-rechargeable batteries?” Kayani was murmuring.

“Could be,” said Stark, “But it’d take a hell of a lot to power something this size, weight. Unless those Hydra techs were way ahead of us, there’s gotta be some myoelectrics going on too. I’m guessing at some point the battery would’ve run dry, in any case, and he’d have been stuck with a paperweight for an arm.”

“I remember…” said Bucky. “Comin’ outa cryo. Could move the fingers if I thought about it, maybe lift the arm an inch, but it’d take a while to restore function.”

“He may have some intact musculature in there somewhere,” said Kayani. “We need to go slow around the socket.”

“You don’t gotta pussyfoot around, on my account,” said Bucky. “Just get it off.”

Kayani looked up. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I’d just as soon not torture my patients. You’ll let me know if you start to feel any discomfort?” It was posed as a question, but it was clear that it was a directive.

“I think I can get in…” Stark was saying. “There’s a panel… yeah. Oooh, hello… what’s this?”

“Don’t get distracted,” said Kayani. “Can you get access to the… do we even have a humeral head?”

“Is that muscle?” asked Stark. Kayani moved around to where Stark was pointing with what looked like a pair of fancy tweezers.

“Yup,” she said, clipped, and raised her eyebrows as she glanced at Bucky’s face. “I’m gonna get the anesthetic spray, and then we’ll do some local injections.”

Darcy was standing next to Bucky on the other side, and she picked up his flesh hand again, ran her fingers along the top of it. He was focusing on her movements, his head turned away from where the others were working. They could hear the sound of the spray, and he turned his head a little more, almost a shiver.

“You feel that?” asked Kayani. “Like a cool breath maybe?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Wish we’d had some of that stuff after the fall,” said Darcy.

“It’s got limited efficacy for someone with his enhancements,” said Kayani, “but it’ll allow us to deal with that muscle if we work quickly. We’ll give it a few minutes and then I’ll do some injections before we proceed.” She cut him off before he could argue. “I’m not going to debate it.”

Stark was ignoring all of them, back to tinkering with something lower down. “Got some flexible microbatteries… looks like SHIELD tech. Wonder how long these puppies last…”

“You may feel a pinching,” said Kayani, and Bucky closed his eyes while she administered a series of local injections— both on the inside where they’d uncovered the intact tissue, and then externally, near the seam with the mesh, angling toward the deltoid. “If you feel any more discomfort, I want you to tell me, so that we can stop and address it,” she said sternly. She nodded to Stark. “Let’s get this done. We’re going to have to detach the muscle from the rod there… move it to… I’m guessing the scapula, if we can uncover it. Can you cut those… let’s call them tendons…”

Darcy was starting to feel anxious— what she’d imagined as popping a piece off the circuit board of a computer had turned into manipulating his living tissues while he was awake. “Is any of this like doing a standard amputation?” she asked, falling back on her old instinct to talk her way through anxiety.

Kayani again switched places with Stark, who’d finished up with something that looked like a fancy Dremel tool. “In some ways, yes,” she said. She spoke easily as she worked, her calm demeanor reassuring. “Lean forward a little,” she said to Bucky, while Stark pulled up a chair to get a closer look inside.

“On a flesh arm, we’d be dealing with all the organic structures,” Kayani continued, answering Darcy’s question. “It’s messy— severing tissues and nerves, ligating the artery… a lot of fluid… but there’d be a clear procedure… like following a recipe. This feels more like… field surgery— figuring it out as you go along.”

She continued to comment as she worked, while Bucky kept his head turned away. “Huh,” said Kayani, peering inside. “If they left the deltoid as a functional muscle… could be it was required, for smooth abduction… I suppose with the serum, nice strong muscle like that… but how did they keep it from tearing?”

“My shoulder was always sore,” said Bucky, and it was almost a surprise to hear him speak up again— Darcy hadn’t thought he was really engaged in the narrative going on; he’d seemed pretty checked out, just allowing them to manipulate him like an inanimate thing.

“Was probably tearing all the time, and then repairing,” he added. He looked up to the virtual screens that Stark had left open. “Any sign of electronics in the uh… other parts of me they replaced?”

“Not that I can see,” said Kayani. “If there’s something transmitting a signal, it’s almost certainly hidden in the circuitry of the arm. Nothing’s showing up anywhere else. That’s good news— we can leave the remaining tissues and artificial bones in place. I really want to leave that scapula alone. Judging by the scans, it’s a solid, beautifully-machined piece— far better than anything you’d get from standard artificial orthopedics. It’ll serve you well moving forward.”

“Could it be removed later if he wanted to?” asked Darcy.

“Well, sure, but…” Kayani hesitated. “A full forequarter amputation is far more… disfiguring. Leaving the shoulder intact will give you more options…” She shifted her body, bending her legs a little to improve her angle, and said, “Lean forward a bit more, if you can, Mr. Barnes.”

He did it, closing his eyes and taking a deeper breath, in and out, through his nose.

“You feeling this?” asked Kayani, pausing.

“No,” he said. “Just— want to get it done.”

She worked for a another minute in silence and then said, “Watch the muscle,” low, to Sark. “It’s detached, but I need you to get the arm off before I can continue. There’s… it looks like the same titanium-alloy core, replacing the humerus… see if you can find an attachment point to the shoulder socket.” She shifted out of the way then, her gloved hands held in front of her chest, letting Stark get in close.

Bucky’s body rocked a little as Stark pushed and pulled on something inside the shoulder, and then, after a minute, he said, “Think I got it. Just gotta get this— ” There was a whirring sound and a click, and then Stark stepped back suddenly, the entire arm in his hands, adjusting his stance to bear the weight. Bucky actually tilted over a bit toward his intact side, imbalanced from the sudden loss of all the metal. He exhaled roughly, eyes shut.

“You okay?” asked Darcy. She kept her eyes on him, almost afraid to look at the arm as Stark moved away with it. When it’d been attached to him, she’d just seen it as an extension of his body— though artificial, it’d been a piece of him: the hand with its segmented fingers responding to his thoughts, his feelings.

Now, by itself, inert, it seemed more like a _thing_ , and she could see it as the evil that’d been forced upon him, used mostly for destruction and pain. She wondered if that’s how it’d always felt to him— like an unwelcome alien, pretending to be his, but waiting, patient, ready to kill when someone had the right code…

“Get back here,” called Kayani, as Stark scuttled away with the limb and set it down on a table. “We’re not done yet,” she said, when he continued to hover over it, bending so that his eyes were inches away. “C’mon; you’ve got all night to play with that thing. I need you to make me some anchor points. Can you drill through this without butchering it?”

“Sure,” said Stark. He seemed cheerful now, almost excited. He was like a kid on Christmas morning, wanting to rush through breakfast and get back to his new toys. “Right there? How many you need?”

Once Stark had prepared the scapula with a series of tiny, precisely drilled holes, Kayani made admirably quick work of wrapping the end of the muscle around it and securing it to the anchor points with a line of tiny, perfect knots. They replaced the layers of metal mesh, removing the excess to make a tidy cap over the shoulder socket. Darcy picked up a piece of the discarded mesh, turning it over in her hands— it was beautiful in its own way, like a cross between chainmail and fish scales. “Can I keep this?” she asked.

“Up to him,” said Kayani.

“Don’t know why you’d want it,” said Bucky.

“It’s pretty,” she said, running her fingers over it. “Maybe we can make something out of it.”

“We can leave the outer plating off,” said Stark. “I’ll secure the mesh with temporary welds, until we know what you want to do next.”

“Fine,” said Bucky.

Stark pulled down his safety glasses again, and used a hand-held pistol-grip welder to tack the mesh down along the line of Bucky’s armpit, and up both sides, a mere inch away from the seam with his flesh. For all his juvenile flippancy, Darcy had to admire the man’s focus and precision, taking great care with the tool while working close to Bucky’s skin.

Stark finished and stood back— from the outside at least, Bucky now almost appeared to be a normal, flesh-and-blood man who’d had an amputation. The mesh that met the crudely scarred seam was the only real clue that something unusual had happened to him. With a shirt on, he’d have no trouble walking around in public, drawing only the kind of attention any amputee would.

“We done here?” said Stark, after setting the welder down, his eyes darting over to the table where the metal arm waited.

“Yes, yes— go on,” said Kayani, rolling her eyes.

“Stark,” said Bucky, stopping the man before he could dash off.

Stark swiveled around on one foot. “Yo.”

Bucky was looking in his direction, but didn’t make eye contact. “The arm. I don’t need it— don’t want it back. It’s yours. Learn from it, destroy it… whatever. And… thank you.”

Stark touched his index finger to the side of his forehead and then tipped it toward Bucky, like a mini salute, and then grabbed the limb off the table, taking a moment to heft the weight of it, and then headed out of the room. “Anyone needs me, I’ll be in my workshop,” he said without looking back.

<<>>

“It’s a big change,” Kayani was saying, her eyes fixed on his face, serious. “Don’t go thinking that just because it was elective, it’s not going to be traumatic to lose an arm. You’re going to have a period of adjustment. A lot of things you’ve taken for granted… you’ll need to come up with some new strategies. Frustration is going to be a given. Make some space for those emotions, and check in with Sam. Okay?”

She’d made them wait there in the room for an additional half-hour after Stark had left, so that she could assess his pain once the anesthetic wore off. Typical of Bucky, he didn’t complain of any discomfort— if he even felt any, he probably deemed it unworthy of comment. Darcy could see Kayani scrutinizing him for tells— watching his flesh hand, the tiny muscles near his eyes and the corners of his mouth— looking for signs of tension.

He’d slid off the operating chair as soon as she’d given him leave to, tipping over again from the unfamiliar distribution of weight. Darcy had instinctively reached out to help him, but he’d steadied himself, holding up his hand to fend off any assistance. Now he was pacing back and forth in the room, head down, wobbly, like someone who’d had a few too many, trying to find his center of balance.

“You hear what I said?” asked Kayani, and he glanced up, pausing his efforts, and scrubbed his hand across the scruff of his jaw.

“Yeah, I heard you.”

“Okay,” she said, dropping her arms from where she’d crossed them over her chest. “I’m reluctantly releasing you, but if you start to feel pain that seems… irregular, I want you to call me.”

He sighed and nodded his head, and then he held out his hand, finally making eye contact. “Thank you. Thank you for doing this.”

She shook his hand and said, “Glad to help,” and then, “I’ll see you next week, Darcy. Take care, you guys.” She left through a side door that led to a scrub room, leaving them alone.

Darcy was quiet as she watched him struggle to get his shirt back on— a simple task that was surprisingly complicated with only one hand. She was relieved when he finally made a noise of frustration and said, “Could you…”

He bent down so she could get the fabric over his head, and then she rotated it so that he could thread his right arm through. He settled the shirt onto his shoulders, the other sleeve now hanging loose off the left side. He made a chuckling sound in his throat. “Guess I better get used to askin’ for help,” he said.

“You’ll be a pro at this in no time,” she said. “And anyway, it’s temporary, right?”

“Right,” he said, though with less conviction than she’d hoped for.

She opened the main door to exit the operating suite, and Steve was there, jumping up from the chair he’d been waiting in, on the other side. “Hey,” she said. “Didn’t know you were here.”

Steve’s eyes went to the empty sleeve, and then searched Bucky’s face. “How was it?” he asked.

“Fine,” said Bucky, rolling the shoulder on his intact side, as he stretched his neck muscles simultaneously with a head rotation. “Hard to get used to the… weight difference.”

Steve chuckled. “Not gonna say I know how it feels, but I remember somethin’ similar, after I got my upgrade— kept bangin’ into doorways and stuff, thinkin’ I was still drivin’ a little body. Took a while for my head to map the new dimensions or somethin’.”

Bucky nodded, and then after a few more seconds of tense silence, Steve said, “Look, I…” He pressed his lips together, choosing the words, breathing out when he worked up to it. “Sorry if… I didn’t mean to make you feel like you didn’t have my support on this.”

Bucky was nodding again, and then he smirked. “You come up with that yourself, or did Sam put you up to it?”

Steve cracked a smile then. “Jerk.”

“C’mere, ya punk,” said Bucky, and reached his arm out to him, pulled him in for a quick, companionable hug. When they separated, he said, “You see Stark?”

“Not yet,” said Steve, and then his face sobered again. “I, uh… I actually came over to tell you guys that Barton’s back.” He looked at Darcy. “He stopped by the property on the way— there’s a bunch of boxes for you waitin’ by the landing pad. Thought I’d help you carry it up.”

“Did he say…” Darcy couldn’t bring herself to finish the question.

Steve put his hands on his hips, looked down for a second. “Yeah,” he finally said. “Positive ID.”

Bucky blew out a breath, turning away. “Dammit,” he said. Even though they’d all been expecting it, the news was still a blow.

“Let’s uh… let’s go move your stuff,” said Steve, “and get you guys something to eat. We can talk about what to do next.” He looked to Bucky, who was still facing away, leaning against the wall with his hand. “If that’s okay,” he added. “Do you need to rest?”

“Nah,” said Bucky. “Let’s do it.” He pushed off the wall and turned, stumbling a little, still finding his balance. They headed to the elevators, and as he walked at Darcy’s side, his hand reached out to find hers. She grabbed onto it, saying everything she needed to with a squeeze.

<<>>

Bucky had insisted on doing his part; his strength allowed him to easily heft a box one-armed, especially if Steve picked it up for him first. It was surreal to see him walking around without the other arm, doing whatever, not more than an hour after surgery, but they were trying to follow his cues, which were pretty clearly telegraphing that he didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.

They had all of her stuff from the Redoubt— which was basically everything she owned in the world— up in the guest suite in only three trips. There was a bag of stuff for Bucky too— extra clothes, and his Dopp kit from the safe room.

After moving all the boxes, they checked the rations in the cupboards and the fridge, and settled on some of the familiar gourmet microwave dinners— the same ones that’d been at the Redoubt; nobody was in the mood to cook.

Enjoying their food didn’t feel like a priority anyway, under the circumstances, and they fell into an instinctive shoveling of nutrients into their bodies. Steve stuck around and had a couple of the heated-up trays himself, the three of them seated at a small circular table in the kitchenette, and got them up to speed on the developing news.

“Barton looked pretty beat-up when I saw him,” he said. “He feels responsible… I mean, any of us would in his place.”

“Where is he now?” asked Darcy. She was stirring her fork mindlessly through her tray of black beans and rice, which should have been called ‘black _bean_ and rice’; there was only one goddamn bean in the whole thing.

“He’s shootin’ it out, down on the range,” said Steve.

“This place got a shootin’ range?” Bucky was surprised.

“Yep,” said Steve. “Pretty nice one. I’m sure Tony would let you use it.”

He didn’t say anything, and Darcy could almost hear him thinking. She didn’t even know if target practice was something he was interested in doing for sport, but the way that Steve suggested it made her think that he did, or at least had at one time.

“Any word on the arm? He find anything yet?” asked Steve.

Bucky picked up his phone, checked for messages. “Nope.” He pushed up from his seat at the little dining table and walked his microwave dinner tray over to the trash, and took a minute to hand-wash his fork, which, like putting on the shirt, was a stupid, mundane task that got a whole lot more complicated with only one hand.

Darcy watched him uneasily— he’d been ridiculously calm and cavalier about the drastic change to his body, just diving right back in without so much as an hour to sit down and say ‘well this is weird’… and she thought about what Kayani had said before she left— more specifically, what Darcy felt she’d been implying: that in electing to remove the arm, he might feel that he’d ceded the right to be bothered by any of the consequences.

They were also pointedly avoiding further discussion of the sad news about the real Wells, and it was starting to bother her. She’d much rather have it all out— admit, out loud, that it really fucking sucked— all of it. Being trapped in a cage (even a very fancy one); suddenly having only one arm, even if it’s what you wanted; finding out an innocent woman had been killed because of you…

Bucky excused himself to use the bathroom, and Steve took the opportunity to turn his focus to Darcy. “You okay?” he asked. He had those worried eyes that made you want to lie and say everything was peachy-keen, but she knew he actually wanted the truth… that he cared.

“Just tired,” she said, chickening out… and it was true, except for the ‘just’ part. “It’s been a hell of a day. I think I want to take a bath and go to bed. What’s on the docket for tomorrow?”

“I think we should all try to meet again— whoever’s around. I know Barton’s staying the night, and Tasha’s here. Sam’s at HQ ’til day after tomorrow, I think… but I know he wants to start workin’ on those words with Bucky…”

“Is there a plan for the Wells stuff? Both the fake one and… God, this fucking sucks. I mean, how does this even work? Do you guys coordinate somehow with the local cops? How do you keep Bucky out of it?”

“There’s a protocol for something like this,” said Steve. “It’d be a helluva lot easier if we could still do it through SHIELD, but I know the right strings to pull, how to get what we need without the flow of information goin’ too far in the other direction… I don’t like usin’ the name for things like that, but I’ll tell you— sometimes bein’ Captain America has its benefits…”

She gave him a sad smile. She didn’t even think of him as Captain America anymore— he was just Steve. Her friend. And now he reached out his hand and put it on hers, and said, “I’m glad you guys have each other. It’s… this might get pretty rough for a while…”

“Steve,” she said. “I’ve had a gun to my head, watched Bucky almost choke you to death, and then I fell out of a plane. I’m not sure how much more rough it could get.” She grimaced. “God, I feel like I just jinxed us.”

Steve was looking at her with nothing but compassion, and she sighed. “I know what you’re saying,” she said. “I’m kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, myself.” She met his eyes and said, “But I’m not going anywhere. I’m all in.”

He squeezed her hand in reply, holding her eyes, and then released her, sitting back as his hands slid to the edge of the table, and he took a breath and said, “Well,” and then pushed his chair away and stood up.

“I’m takin’ off, Buck,” he called toward the bath studio, waiting a moment, listening, but there was no reply.

“Call me if you need anything,” he said to her, quietly, and gave her a little one-armed hug and a kiss on the side of the forehead. “I’ll let you know about tomorrow, when we figure out a time to meet.”

“Kay,” she said. “Night Steve.”

She shut the door and set the electronic lock, and then stood there a moment, listening. It was very quiet in the apartment. She padded into the bath studio; the large room with the jacuzzi and sinks was empty, but she saw the door to the shower and toilets was shut. It was a separate large room that housed the toilet, bidet, an enormous walk-in shower with natural-stone walls and glass doors, and a standard, but still luxury-quality bathtub, for those who just couldn’t handle the decadence of the jacuzzi tub in the main room. She also knew that it had the largest mirror in the apartment, filling an entire wall opposite the bathtub.

“Bucky? You okay?” She knocked on the door, and tried the knob— it turned, and she slowly pushed the door open, and then mentally sagged in relief, because he was fine. Or, not exactly fine— but he was alive and breathing, and she could see in his eyes that he wasn’t shut down.

He was sitting on the floor, his back propped against the side of the tub, facing the mirror. His long legs were stretched out in front of him, and his one arm lay flopped between them, as though someone had picked it up by the wrist and then let it fall, a dead weight.

“Sorry,” he said, without turning his head. He was staring into the mirror, but she didn’t think he was actually looking. “Heard Steve go.”

“Yeah,” she said. She joined him on the floor, and the natural place to sit wound up being on his altered side, so that’s where she took up her place, nestling into him. She knew normally his metal arm would have come around her, and it was odd to just feel air there. “So what’s up, Bucky Bear? Why are we sitting on the bathroom floor?”

His hand found hers, held it in his lap, running his fingers over the complicated planes of it, and it reminded her of the forest after they’d fallen, when they’d nested together in their injury, and he’d first explored her hand like it was something novel, precious.

“I came in here to take a piss,” he finally said. “Didn’t mean to get…”

She waited, as the pads of his fingertips circled over her knuckles, and then he turned her hand over and traced along the lines in her palm. “Mirror took me by surprise,” he said. “Seein’ it… how I look now. Not just the arm, but the hair too… short, like him… seein’ it all together, made me realize. I never really went through it before…”

“Through what?” she asked softly, moving her palm against his.

“When I fell… when I lost my arm… I never went through it. Never went through havin’ one arm… never even saw myself… or if I did, I don’t remember.” He shifted his butt slightly on the floor. “Maybe I don’t wanna.”

She was watching his face, listening, but he was staring at their hands, letting the words drip down. “Seein’ it now… it’s almost like… I’m him. Like if he’d survived… not been taken.”

He breathed out, pressed his lips together for a few seconds. “I used to spend a lot of time thinkin’ about that… what coulda been, if Steve had found me… pulled me outa that ravine…”

“So… is this a good thing?” she asked softly. “Or…”

“It’s a good thing… I think,” he said. He tilted his head, worked his jaw a little, hesitant. His fingers finally found the spaces between hers, sank their way through, clasping her hand to his, and he took a ragged breath, and when she looked at his face again, she realized that he was crying a little.

“Remember…” he said. “When I left… after you cut my hair… and then I came back and I said I’d figured out some stuff…”

“Yeah,” she said, barely audible, her thumb moving against his finger where their hands were linked together, needing to move her skin on him, even in just the smallest way.

“I think…” He was taking his time, like he was trying to make sure he got it right. “I been tryin’ so hard not to be… him. Pushin’ the memories away. Sayin’ I wasn’t— couldn’t be… I just wanted to go forward. Erase all that and… Whoever this new person was, I’d just be that guy. I guess I thought I was savin’ myself from havin’ to… feel sick about what he lost. What got taken. The stuff I ain’t never gettin’ back. Like seein’ my baby sister grow up…”

He sucked in a breath suddenly, turning his head away, holding it in, or trying to, the words a mess… “Havin’ a family, or some kinda normal life…”

His tears were coming harder now, dripping off his face, and she knew he’d want to swipe at them, but he couldn’t, having only the one hand, and it was busy hanging onto hers.

“So maybe I don’t get to go back, but…” He sniffed, and then he did let go of her hand and wiped his face, and took another shuddering breath. “When I saw myself… without the metal— without the arm…” He made a short sound, a scoffing laugh and said, “My first thought was, I don’t know who I am. I was standing there, starin’, and I don’t even _fuckin’_ know who I am, if I ain’t that thing they made me.” He looked down and swallowed heavily.

“Didn’t recognize my own damn self. The _real me_ — the one that got stole.” His voice was shaking, but he was trying desperately to hold it together, steady himself, but the more he tried to stifle it, the more the emotion cracked through, his breathing even more agitated, and he exhaled sharply. “God _dammit_ , but I can’t let them win.”

He couldn’t look at her, but he was working it, choking it out. “When you came in here, I was gonna say, ‘I don’t know who I am,’ but that’s a lie. It’s a goddamned lie. I know who I am.” And his voice was breaking now, the words coming out rough, and she was crying now too, unable to stay steady as he fell apart in front of her.

“I’m him,” he said, grinding it out, angry. “I’m Bucky Barnes. And they fuckin’ took me, and they ripped me up. Cut me apart. Made me— they—”

He couldn’t speak anymore, the pain of it coming up now like a dry heave, his body shaking with it, twisting away from her, and she stayed there, her hand moving on the left side of his back, trying to ground him as he got it out, his body racked by stifled sobs, and she waited, quiet but present, there for him, as he bled it out through his tears.

After some time, when he’d slowed down to a softer thread of ragged breaths, she eased herself around, slipping quietly into his lap, her knees on either side of his hips, and she took his bowed face in her hands, running her thumbs along his cheekbones, through the light scratch of the beard that was coming in again, just stroking him patiently until he tipped his head up, eyes open but so far away, looking into some distance that didn’t exist… and she kissed him, whispering to him in between each press of lips to the bones of his face, the tracks of his tears, his soft mouth, saying his name like a slow pulse… “ _Bucky_ …,” trying to bring him back… an affirmation… “ _Bucky_ …,”

And then, as natural as breathing, in the space between their lips as she pulled back an inch, “ _I love you_ …” And again— “ _I love you_ …,” willing him to hear it, know it, believe it— her lips so close to his that he could feel the words as much as hear them, “ _I see you_ …”

She didn’t know if she was getting through, but he shut his eyes as he took in a full, deep breath, and let it out long, rocking a little at the end, and when he opened his eyes, he was looking right at her, present again, and he made a sound in his throat and pressed his forehead into hers, his voice a whisper against her lips…

“Sweetheart…” He tilted his head a little, closing his eyes again. “I want so badly to just pick you up, carry you back to that bed… show you…” He sounded sad, like it was something he’d finally realized he wanted, but couldn’t have.

She felt like her whole body was being rocked in a sleepy wave, and she pressed herself closer, wrapping all of her limbs around him to hang on, and said, “So do it.”


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you don't want to read 6,000+ words of sex, you can pretty much skip this entire chapter. You won't miss any plot. 🤣  
> \-----------------------------------

She didn’t have to ask twice.

As soon as she’d given him the go-ahead with her words— “ _So do it_ ” — he’d pulled his legs up and shifted into a squat, steadying himself with his one hand, and then pushed up as she clung to him, her arms and legs wrapped tightly around his body. As soon as he was up, he widened his stance to balance himself, his arm coming around to support her weight.

“That pill still doin’ its magic, or you need a fresh one,” he said. His voice was still gravelly from the stress of his breakdown, but he seemed just as determined as her to make this happen…

“I’m still flying high,” she said, almost whispering it, and she’d moved her hands into his hair, realizing she didn’t need to hang on with her arms— he was strong enough, even one-armed, to carry her easily. He was making his way through the low-lit apartment, and she was still kissing his face, unable to break the connection even for the short trip to the bedroom.

“Not too high, I hope,” he said. “Want you to know what you’re sayin’ yes to…”

Was he talking about consent? Or was he worried about her still wanting him with only one arm? She wasn’t sure— but either way, the answer was the same, and she dragged her fingernails across his scalp as she said it: “Bucky, I’ve been saying _yes_ to this in my head since the first time you kissed me… and it’s just gotten bigger and louder every day.”

“Includin’ today?”

He’d made it to the bedroom, and he kicked the door half-shut, even though there was no need for extra privacy, and sat them both down on the bed, her bent legs straddling his hips. The covers were still rumpled from earlier that day, when she’d put her mouth on him, and the memory of it stirred her…

“Especially today,” she whispered, and she pulled at the hem of his shirt, lifting it up and then over his head, baring his newly-altered body again. She let the shirt fall to the floor, and then moved her hands to his chest, running one palm straight down the center of him.

He leaned in to kiss her, doing it like it was new, just brushing against her lips at first before pressing in more to deepen it. She could hear his breathing picking up, and she rocked a little in his lap as his hand came up to hold the back of her head.

She could feel his abs engaging, using them to balance and hold his body up without his other hand to steady himself, and she broke the kiss, sliding off his lap onto the sheets, and plucked at the bottom of her own shirt. “Help me get this off,” she said.

She did her usual trick of pulling her arms in through the sleeves, even though she wasn’t hurting, and then he got it off the rest of the way, only taking slightly longer to do it with one hand, and his eyes dropped down to take in the swell of her breasts in her bra.

He slipped his index finger under one of the straps and nudged it down her shoulder, and then traced his thumb back along the top edge of the cup, skimming against her skin with a feather-light touch. It was just one of the cheap white bras from Walmart, but the way he looked at her, touched her, made her feel as sexy as if she’d been wearing expensive lingerie…

“Turn around,” he said, drawing a little circle in the air, finger pointed down. She turned, legs folded on the bed, and looked over her shoulder as he worked the hook-and-eye closure on the band. She was impatient to get it off, but he wanted to do it— it took him a few tries one-handed, but he got it, and then she pulled the other strap down and lifted it away, tossed it aside.

She felt his hand smooth down the bare skin of her back, and then up to her hair, sweeping it aside so he could move in and kiss her at the base of her neck. She could feel the warmth of his chest right behind her, and she leaned into it as his arm came around to hold her against him, and she knew he could feel the pounding of her heart.

He was moving his lips against her neck as his hand slowly mapped the curves of her breasts, his palm warm against her bare skin, and she sighed as he lingered on the side closest to his arm, pressing against the soft fullness of her, tracing circles on her nipple with his thumb, and she felt a jolt in her abdomen followed by a flush of heat between her legs. “ _Bucky_ …”

She turned slowly to face him, needing to kiss him again, her lips almost shaking as they tasted each other, their tongues a slow tangle. Her legs were folded beneath her and she was starting to rock against her own heel, the need building, and she moved her hand down to the waistband of his pants, tugging on it. “Get these off,” she whispered. “Need you…”

He pulled back, breathing deeply, his eyes watching her, looking sleepy from arousal, and then he lifted himself enough to draw the pants off, taking the underwear with them, while she peeled her own bottoms off, adding them to the pile on the floor.

She crawled back into his lap, both of them completely bare now, and she spread out, opening up, bracketing him with her bent legs, her skin tingling with anticipation as she moved her eyes down his body, making it clear that he was everything she wanted, dizzy in the knowledge that this was finally happening…

They were breathing in tandem, and she couldn’t stop moving, her body knowing what it wanted, and she shamelessly dragged herself against his hard length, and he shuddered, mouth falling open as his eyes shut… “ _God… Darcy_ …”

And she would have just lifted up to climb right on, completely ready to take him in hand and sink down, but he had other plans…

Wrapping his arm firmly around her, he turned them toward the head of the bed and then he extended his arm to lay her down carefully, her hair fanning out beneath her. He sat back, kneeling between her legs, and just moved his eyes over her, his chest rising and falling… he’d seen her naked before, but the way he was looking at her now made it feel different— charged with the weight of emotion— and he didn’t say a word, but his face said it all— that she was beautiful.

“C’mere,” she said, full of affection, but impatient, too, wanting all of him pressed against her, even the air between them too much of a barrier now. “Come to me.”

He leaned over her, his arm muscles flexing as the single limb supported his entire upper body, and then he bent in a one-armed pushup to move down and kiss her, slowly. She made a needy sound, trying to pull him on top of her, but he retreated, sitting up again.

“Can’t touch you like I want,” he complained. “Wish I had both my real arms… so I could make it better for you.”

“There is no ‘better’ as long as you’re with me,” she said. “Get back down here, or I’m coming up there.”

“Not yet,” he said, and he shifted on his knees, moving over her legs to her right, and lowered himself down by her side, the metal cap of his shoulder pressed into the mattress, freeing his right hand. She was already rolling to face him, moving in, when he said, “Wanna feel you…”

He ran his hand down the curving length of her body, his eyes following the trace of his touch on her, making circles on her breasts, her abdomen, and then down to the hair between her legs, fingers trying to slip between her folds.

She slid in closer, helping him, and he made a little sound in his throat as she lifted her leg up onto his hip, opening herself fully to his touch as she pressed her abdomen against him in waves. He kissed her once, careful, as he stroked her soft flesh, and then deepened the kiss, as he dipped and curved his fingers to feel inside, exhaling with a sound of pleasure when he felt how ready she was for him already.

“I wanna…” he started, as his fingers slid out and just rested against her for a moment. “Christ— don’t know what I want more… touch you… taste you… crawl up inside…” He slid his fingers into her again, his thumb moving up to stroke gently around her, making her shiver…

He exhaled loudly and said, “Want it all…”

He slid his body down the bed, kissing her breast, and circled her nipple with his tongue, his fingers still moving, feeling her inside. He made a hungry sound, taking more of her into his mouth, swirling and warm, pulling on her, making noises that heated her as much as the stroke of his fingers, high up inside, his palm pressing against her body like a pulse…

“You can,” she said, breathless, finally responding to his words, almost shaking from his touch, how he was winding her up, rocking herself against his hand. “You will.” It was hard to speak, but she pushed the words out, urging him on: “But right now… I need you to get inside me… before I lose my mind.”

He pulled off her breast finally, stopping to catch his breath, and he licked his lips, eyes blinking slowly, as if in a daze, letting his fingers slip out of her, and when she rolled onto her back he followed, pushing himself up and moving on his knees, back between her legs, spreading her out, and the sensation made her arch, lifting her hips, needing him, so beyond ready, aching for him…

He was running his hand down the smooth skin of her inner thigh, back and forth, from her hip to her knee, holding her open, and she closed her eyes, breathing, trying to be in the moment. He was giving her all the time and care that she’d wanted from other men, and had all but given up on— so much so that she’d forgotten she even knew how to enjoy it herself— this slow, savory build, ramping it up gradually until it was almost an agony of need…

“Never wanted that thing touchin’ you like this,” he was saying, “but part of me’s regrettin’ the arm right now… wishin’ I could do this proper…”

She opened her eyes to see him moving his own gaze over her body again, like he had when he’d first laid her down, and she was so open to him, exposed, that she would have felt self-conscious if she’d been any less aroused, but the look on his face just made her flush further with need, almost painful, and her face must have said it, because it seemed to hit him like a force, and he said, “I can’t— I gotta— _Jesus_ …”

He slipped his arm under her leg as he slid down, spreading her out even more as he pressed against the back of her thigh, but instead of positioning himself as she expected, he slid down even further, her leg on his shoulder as he leaned a little on his side to support himself, down low between her legs, and she actually cried out a little when he moved in with his mouth.

Here, too, he took his time, treating her body like something delicious to savor, his lips and tongue so warm and wet, and she rocked her hips, moaning as he explored her shapes and flavor, kissing and tasting her between hot breaths, making his own sounds of pleasure as she shuddered and arched and fought the urge to shamelessly grind against him.

She reached out to grab onto something, wanting his arm but finding only the bedsheets, clawing at them, squeezing the fabric as she whispered his name, and he pressed in even more, holding her open, almost pushing her up the bed with his enthusiasm, like he couldn’t get close enough…

And if it’d been any other time, she’d have been content to stay there, to let him worship her, writhing her way to a euphoric end, but for this, their first time sharing it, she wanted to finish with them locked together, to look into his eyes, clasping him with her release, and with the way this was shaping up, he was gonna destroy her with this alone, in some kind of epic climax that would wring her out and leave her with nothing left to share.

She found his wrist, pulled on it, gently, trying to find the words, gasping and shivering, thighs shaking, her hips moving in spite of herself as he loved her with his talented mouth, and she said, “ _Bucky… honey, please… need you. Please_ …” She was repeating it, and he seemed as lost as she was, taking a minute to catch up, and when he finally pulled away he just rested his head against her thigh for a moment, his breath still hot on her center…

And she pulled on his wrist again, the action saying, “ _Come on… come to me_ ,” and she said it again out loud, insistent: “ _Need you_ …,” and that spurred him on finally, and he pushed himself back up with his arm, onto his knees, moving up and over her again, and he was breathing heavily, and she could hardly stand it, needing him to press into her already, fill her up…

She could feel him moving in, brushing against her, so close, his flesh hand bracing his body just inches above her, and her heart was pounding, waiting for it, feeling the heat of his body hovering over her, the smell of sex thick in the air… and finally he sagged a little, dropping his forehead to hers and said, “Sweetheart… doll…,” and her stomach flipped for a second, afraid that for some reason he couldn’t actually go through with it, but then he kind of chuckled and said, “Remember how I said… I was gonna have to get used to askin’ for help…,” and then she got it—realized he couldn’t use his other hand to guide himself into her…

She lifted up just enough to kiss him, tenderly, her own flavor musky on his lips, and then she reached down and found him, thick and hard and ready, and brought him to her, holding him there until he could take over, pushing in, just a little at first and then a retreat, and then more…

She helped him, moving against him, making him slick, until finally he was able to sink all the way in, relaxing his lower body into her as she wrapped her legs around him, holding him close, and they both exhaled, a letting go, and she hissed, “ _Yes_ ,” just as he cursed— a breathy but emphatic “ _Fuck_ …” and neither of them moved for a moment, just enjoying the feeling…

She couldn’t stop smiling as she breathed, basking in the pleasure of the warm stretch, filled by him, feeling him everywhere, and she moved her hands up to his back, forgetting the surgical pad, and it crinkled and then they both opened their eyes, almost laughing, and he pulsed his hips as he said, “That gonna bother you?”

She blinked dreamily as she looked back at him, trailing a hand down the side of his face, and said, “Nothing’s gonna bother me when you’re moving inside me.”

He grinned and pulled back, and then rocked into her again, slowly, pausing as he bottomed out, both of them shutting their eyes again, reveling in the feel of it, and he sighed, and said, “ _Oh my God_ …”

And then he breathed and started moving again, finding his way, lowering himself down more, a little on his side, settling his extra weight onto his forearm, so that he could forget about holding himself up— to put all his energy and care into the movements of his hips as he sank into her, over and over...

And she could feel when he started to lose himself in it, his breath coming faster, remembering the rhythm, and she was rolling her own hips up to meet him, encouraging him on every stroke, and her leg curled around to his backside, pressing him in, wanting him deeper, greedy, and it was going to be fast, but that was okay… and suddenly he stopped— holding himself very still, his head turned sharply to the side, mouth open as he squeezed his eyes shut.

“Sweetheart,” he gasped out. “Don’t— don’t move for a second. I can’t— just give me a second….”

It was more than a second— he held himself like that for ten whole seconds, a kind of beautiful torture as she desperately wanted to move against him, squeeze him with her walls, anything— but the longer she waited, the feeling of being with him just became more profound… the sensation of him, touching her everywhere… watching his face: his quiet concentration, the bead of sweat that ran down his temple… his heart pounding under her hand on his chest… she realized she could have climaxed from all of that alone, if she’d lain there long enough, steeped in the heady feeling of being so close, wrapped in his heat, his smell, the weight of his body against her, inside her, everywhere…

And then finally he exhaled and licked his lips and opened his eyes and looked at her, and after the forced pause, and the overwhelming intimacy of it, it was almost like she was seeing him— really seeing him— for the first time… some deeper layer that had only now been revealed, and she could tell that he was seeing it too, in her— their eyes locked as much as their bodies…

It was almost too vulnerable— the instinct to hide from it rising up— but then he bent down to kiss her, slowly, with feeling, and he started moving again… just like he’d said, showing her— the words she’d already shared— she could feel him saying it with every movement, pouring out of him…

He seemed reluctant to put more of his weight on her, but she needed to be closer, to hold him, to feel his body pressing against her, and she was getting some ideas for that, but for now she rolled them a little more, so that they were facing each other side-by-side, his arm pressed into the bed, and then she could slide right up against his body, their chests bumping together, hot and sweaty, her leg hitched up around his hip…

His eyes were fluttering open and then closed, and both of them were breathing heavily, mouths open— not from exertion, the position a little tricky, even more so without his arm to help— but from the heavy feeling that was wrapping around them, and she paused to just inhabit it for a moment, running her hand down his chest as he moved against her, slowly… and it came instinctively, like before, spilling out of her on an exhale— “ _I love you_ …”

She was watching his face, looking for some sign that he’d heard her, that he could feel it, but it was impossible to tell— he was still moving his hips, working the angle, taking it slow like he was drowning in the sensation, and she felt a wave of need so intense it was almost ferocious.

She closed her eyes and grit it out as she rolled her hips to meet his thrust, pressing hard against him… “It’s not even enough… it’s not enough… the words aren’t even enough…” She didn’t know if she was making any sense, gasping it out… “I want you to feel it… need you to know… need you to feel it…” She opened her eyes again, searching his face…

His eyes were still closed, but he spoke finally, breathing the words back to her— “I am… I am… sweetheart… I do…” He dragged his cheek against her face, almost like he was trying to scent her… “I want to feel you— need to—”

He breathed out sharply, frustrated, his one arm trapped beneath him, unable to touch her, to hold her steady as he moved against her, and she wanted to help him, rolled onto her back again, freeing his arm, but he still couldn’t use it, needing it to hold him up, to keep from crushing her… 

She flattened her leg onto the bed to turn them the other way, and he followed her cue, quickly rolling to press his altered side into the bed this time, his arm sweeping around to hold her against him as soon as he could, fingers splayed across her ass, so that they wouldn’t break apart, and then they were side-by-side again, but now he could use his hand, and he moved it up to her face immediately, pushing her hair away so he could kiss her, almost desperate, and she whispered, “Better?”

He exhaled in answer, running his hand down the length of her body, to the dip of her waist and the swell of her hip, back to the curve of her ass, cupping it with his hand to pull her into him as he went deep, and it _was_ better, his hand giving him more control, but he said, “Seems wrong to say… better…,” gasping it out, when he could finally speak.

She brought her leg up even higher, wrapping it around his waist, pressing in even closer, making him shut his eyes again, his mouth falling open as another bead of sweat ran down his face.

He pulled almost all the way out then, so carefully, concentrating, his breath shuddering with the slow-motion slide back in…

“S’like you were sayin’ before…” And he did it again, holding her hip in place so he could control it, an agonizing drag, slow and steady, opening his eyes to look at her while he did it…

“There is no ‘better’… when it’s all…” and he pulsed into her: slow, long, deliberate, on every word: “perfectly…” … again: “goddamn…” … and again: “beautiful…”

His hand moved to her backside again, holding her to him as he sank in deep and stayed there, pausing as she squeezed him inside… he made a noise when she did it, vulnerable, and then he kissed her, slowly, as he circled his hips, and then gradually started to move again…

The slow torture he was working on her was building a thick energy, a charge that made her arch and close her eyes, clenching within, trying to pull him in deeper, working it harder, and he moved his hand up to pull her face into him again, holding her head steady as he kissed her deeply, matching his rhythm below, and then he stilled again, breaking the kiss.

He had his forehead pressed against her, panting, as the words tried to come out… “God…sweetheart…”

And her nose started to sting, overwhelmed by the wash of physical pleasure and the emotion of loving him, and being loved, and it still wasn’t enough— she couldn’t show him how much she felt it— all she could do was say his name again, “ _Bucky_ …,” almost a cry, an answer and a need, whispered against his lips, and then, “C’mere…”

She pressed her palm against the altered side of his chest, right up against his scar, so that she could support him on that side, and then, tugging on his hip with her leg, encouraged him to roll above her again, and he saw what she was doing, her arm like a strut, taking the place of his missing one as he braced himself over her.

They had to separate for a moment to adjust, but it was good, it worked— his right arm still taking most of his weight, and he was about to dip back into her but she said, “Wait,” getting another idea…

“Sit up a sec,” she said, and she bent her right leg, pulling the knee to her chest, and from there she was able to almost straighten the leg in front of his body, between them, resting her ankle on his shoulder, right next to the seam of the metal mesh, and then she said, “Okay, go ahead and lean on my leg on that side.”

“You sure you can bend that way?” he asked, and he was grinning, his face flushed, sweaty, and he bit his lip as his eyes ran over her, appreciating the way the position opened her to him even more…

“Sure,” she said. “It’s just like my yoga routine, only with one leg instead of two.”

“Okay,” he said, and he tried it, leaning down, careful at first, his weight stretching her hamstring as his chest pushed against the back of her leg, but it gave him all the extra support he needed, and she reached down to find him, helping him back in…

And _oh_ …

That _really_ worked…

The angle was incredible, both of them shivering with the first tentative, slippery glide of him as he moved back in… 

It was deep, and intimate, and everything she needed, and she echoed his earlier exhalation as he filled her up completely, breathing, “ _Oh my God_ ,” as he slid all the way home, rolling his hips at the end to press his body flush against hers where they joined…

Apparently it was pretty good for him too, because he just stayed there a moment, his head tipping down, eyes shut, droplets of sweat hanging off the soft curls of his bangs…

“ _Jesus_ ,” he whispered, his hips trembling, trying to maintain control…

He made another noise then, needy, and he started to move again, rocking slowly at first, and then he picked up the pace, gradually, his altered side pressing her leg against her body with each thrust, until he built it back into a greater intensity than before, his breathing picking up along with his pace, cursing under his breath as he gave himself over to it, and she wasn’t going to last much longer, his body hitting her in all the right places now, both inside and out, and she said his name again, “ _Bucky_ …” not a whisper this time, but more like a plea, the sound of it telling him— _yes— do it_ …

And she could feel it coming on, the flood of sensation, not wanting it to end, but needing to rush up to meet it, desperate, and she was getting loud, not holding anything back, her sounds encouraging him as they moved together, faster, both of them working it now, almost like a struggle, a fight to reach it together…

She was trying to keep her eyes open, watching him, so beautiful as he gave her everything, but it was too much, her eyes shutting instinctively as the sensations rushed through her, aware of him right there with her, matching her sounds, getting there with her…

And then one big wave started to wind itself up, building, bigger, intensifying, overwhelming, and she abandoned herself to it finally, crying out even before it crashed, and when she couldn’t hold it back any longer she let it go with a full-body shiver— everything released and tightening at once in a exquisite explosion of sensation, her body clenching and fluttering around the fullness of him inside, and he was holding there with her, riding her shocks, almost stopping his breath, each little tug drawing him in even further, until he gasped and made a sound almost like he was in pain, and then he was following her, and she felt the swell of his body inside her as he cried out…

And for several long moments there was nothing— all of her senses washed out except for her awareness of Bucky, a part of her, melded, inseparable.

He was still buried in her, stilled, both of them just breathing, their bodies slick with sweat, and then he sagged a little, his arm bending a bit, and he said it again: “ _Jesus_ …”

And she carefully placed her hand back against his shoulder so that she could draw her right leg, shaking, back around his body and down. She helped collapse him toward his left side so he could recline on his back as she rolled with him, still connected, and lay her head against his chest— a familiar position for them, only now their lower halves were locked and twisted together, neither of them moving to separate.

She was looking up at his face, the flush of their exertions glowing on it, when she felt another little aftershock, and it made her squeeze him where he was softening inside. It made him smile, his eyes closed, and she sighed, content, and said, “I love that…”

“What,” he said softly, just a rumble.

“Making you smile… it does something to my insides… always has…”

He grinned and rolled a little bit toward her again, using his last bit of flagging strength to move against her, where she still enveloped him, and said, “I like doin’ things to your insides.”

He bit his lip, and then he did slip out, and she looked so affronted by the loss of him that he actually laughed a little, reaching out to curl a lock of her hair on his finger, before he reeled her in for another kiss, full of affection…

Darcy felt a little trickle between her legs, and it really hit her then that he’d finished inside her—no man had ever done that before— and she felt a sudden possessiveness, rolling him onto his back again so that she could drape across him, claiming him, taking what was _hers_.

She lay there, spent and serene, running her fingers through the dark line of hair on his chest, and when she looked up to his face again, she saw something different there, a note in his eyes that was softer, new, and she said, “What is it?”

He took a minute to answer, his voice quiet, hesitant… “Think I’m rememberin’ what it feels like to be…” He paused, blinking, like he was almost afraid to say the last word…

“Peaceful.”

<<>>

“Is that your fourth bowl of cereal?” she asked.

He’d come into the bath studio, where she was soaking, utterly relaxed, under a mountain of orange-scented bubbles. Her body was languid and wrung out in that pleasing way that resulted from being thoroughly serviced, inside and out, her ribs not even bothering her, like some kind of cosmic gift.

It would have actually scared her a little, if she’d spent more than a few seconds thinking about it, the drugs so good that she was probably messing up her healing without even knowing it… not that she gave even one tiny shit, if it meant she could feel this, have this with him, and she was going to make the most of every second she had until those pills ran out...

“Haven’t been keepin’ track,” he said, and set the bowl down after tipping the last of it into his mouth straight from the dish. He stood there, stretching in the golden light, still naked from the shower he’d taken earlier. One of the ambient settings on the control panel offered a simulated candlelight, and the effect was convincing— soothing, sleepy, romantic… His muscled body seemed to glow in the flickering light, beautiful… like a sculptured hero from Greek or Roman antiquity, unearthed from the ruins, missing one its arms…

Darcy sighed and sank lower into the tub, submerged up to her chin, and shut her eyes. “I could get used to this,” she said. “Luxury bathing in between bouts of really awesome sex… an exquisitely attractive man who wanders around, eating cereal in the buff… I feel like I’m complete…”

She opened her eyes, surprised, when she felt the water move next to her, and saw that Bucky was stepping into the tub, hanging onto the edge with his one hand until he lowered himself down to sitting. “You okay to be in here?” she asked. “What about your back?”

“It’ll be fine,” he said, and he slid over to wrap her up in his arm, moving her in front of him, his body becoming a new seat for her. He leaned back with her, letting his left side take the weight. “Water feels nice.”

“ _You_ feel nice.” She sighed again and ran her hand up and down his thigh, under the water. “Now I really am complete…”

He shifted her forward slightly, gathered up her wet hair with his hand, and started running his fingers through it, finding the snarls. “Hand me that comb,” he said, and she leaned sideways to grab it, where she’d left it on the edge of the tub, handing it back to him.

“I’ve got sex hair,” she said, smiling, as he chose a section of waves and started to move the wide-toothed comb through it, patiently working out the tangles, having to go very slowly with only one hand, knowing it would pull on her scalp if he wasn’t careful.

“Love your hair,” he said, contented. “I like combin’ it out.”

“That’s good, because it’s gonna get messed up again, if you play your cards right.”

“Yeah?” he said, and she could hear the grin in his voice as he worked another snarl. “How do I get a seat at the table?” He leaned in to kiss the back of her neck, and she inhaled and undulated a little in his lap, curling her hand against his leg.

“Oh, you’re already there,” she said, and smiled even bigger as he moved his lips higher, up behind her ear where he knew she would shiver from it. He dropped the comb as his hand came around to press into her breast, soapy under the water, his thumb running over her nipple, bringing it quickly to a peak…

She reached down with her own hand, letting her legs fall open more to touch herself, and he pulled his lips from her neck when he realized what she was doing.

“Jesus, doll…”

He moved down to cover her hand, slipping his middle finger between two of hers, stroking her as she moved their hands together, and she swirled her hips and sighed and said, “You wanna move this to the bed?”

He moved lower, pressing into her with his finger as she moved her own hand away, and said, “Didn’t finish combin’ your hair…”

“I think I’ll survive,” she said, her voice breaking as he added another finger, rocking his hand against her, knuckle-deep, the pressure of his palm against her bones making her hips rise up, needing him, already breathing heavily… “God, Bucky…”

He released her when she leaned forward, ran his hand down the silky wet skin of her back, and then she floated across to the other side of the tub, and went up the little steps there, the bubbles sliding down the curves of her hips. “You coming?” she asked slyly, looking at him over her shoulder. His eyes were heavy, looking at her, and she could see by the motion of his arm that he was pulling on himself now, under the soapy water.

“Yeah,” he said, low, giving her a half-smile. “Was just enjoyin’ the view…” And he pushed up and followed her out of the tub, and then she shrieked— a happy sound, not one of pain— and then giggled as he scooped her up easily with his arm, slinging her over his shoulder so that her ass was next to his head, the front half her body hanging upside down behind him, her hair dripping…

“We’re gonna destroy this room…” she said, as they left a trail of puddles all the way to the bedroom, passing the pile of clothes she’d left on the floor a day before. “Who knows when they’ll get the cleaning service going again… we should pick up…”

He laughed as he set her down in the middle of the bed, moving right up between her legs, so he could pick up where he’d left off in the tub.

“You wanna stop this and clean house?” he teased, his fingers finding her… He kissed her before she could answer, a hunger to it, in contrast to the soft drag of his fingers below, where he was working to replace the bathwater’s rougher friction with her own silky slick.

“God, no,” she said, her own voice low, reaching down with her hand to stroke him, and he smiled, closing his eyes, his jaw loose, his face open, happy, and she didn’t know who she was talking to— maybe the Universe— but all she could think as they lay there, touching and kissing and then moving, sliding, exhaling and groaning as they fit their bodies together again… was _thank you_.


	27. Chapter 27

Darcy felt happy.

Part of it was having her stuff back; she’d unpacked most of it, shoving clothes in drawers, piling books on top of the dresser, setting up her laptop on the little writing desk in the bedroom— it’d survived the assault at the Redoubt unscathed, all of her spreadsheets for Jane still intact and ready for her to resume work. She’d especially enjoyed lining up her sizable fingernail polish collection on the double-vanity countertop in the bath studio, the new vibrant _Sunset_ shade from Bucky at the very end.

Part of it had to be the music: she’d decided to finally bite the bullet and try to reconstruct her playlists from years ago, the ones that she’d given up as lost when her iPod was confiscated by SHIELD in New Mexico. She’d started with 1960s and 70s soul and R&B, and she was shimmying her way around the kitchen now, singing along to Stevie Wonder: “ _Don’t you worry ‘bout a thing, baby_ …”

Part of it was definitely the Oxy. That shit was good, and she’d be forever grateful to it for not having to hold back anymore with Bucky, at least for the time being. It also just made everything a little bit softer, a little bit easier. It made her forget she had fractured ribs. It made the food prep she was doing feel like margaritas on a beach.

Maybe it was all those things, but mostly it was the luxury of being able to do something as unexceptional as wake up and make breakfast with someone— no crisis to manage, no ticking clock to outrace— more specifically, being able to do that with the man working next to her. Bucky was cracking eggs into a bowl and smiling at her mediocre but enthusiastic singing, his smile growing wider when she bumped his hips with her butt as she moved past him.

They’d eased out of bed only after exploring each other thoroughly, again, after her wake-up pill, followed by a decadently long shower, and then the luxury of clean clothes that fit. Bucky had pulled on some pants but remained shirtless, airing out his healing back— and then they’d dug around in the fridge, pulling out eggs and breakfast sausages and English muffins and marmalade and other goodies that their friends had provided.

He seemed lighter without the metal arm… as though the removal of its weight was as much metaphorical as a literal subtraction of mass… and he was rising admirably to the challenge of learning how to navigate his environment without it. He’d had no problem making the coffee with one arm, but he’d had trouble with the eggs, complaining that they were going to have more shell than egg in the bowl by the time he was done. Rather than take over, Darcy had found him a video on YouTube demonstrating how to crack them one-handed, and now he was watching it on his Starkphone, practicing until he got it right, while Darcy heated the breakfast sausages in a pan.

Between the loud music and her singing and being lost in the simple pleasure of making food together, neither one of them heard the light knocking on the door, until it became an insistent pounding, and Bucky finally shook off his eggy hand and said, “You hear that? Think someone’s at the door…”

“You want me to—”

“Naw, I’ll get it,” he said, rinsing his hand and drying it on a dishtowel, which he slung over his left shoulder cap. “Don’t burn all the sausages.”

“I like ‘em burned,” she said, grinning.

“You’re gonna wreck ‘em,” he said, laughing, as he jogged over to the door, disabled the electronic lock and then pulled it open to see Steve standing there, a worried look on his face.

As soon as he saw Bucky, apparently unharmed— smiling even, funky music playing in the background— Steve visibly relaxed, but still said, “Everything okay?” He peered around Bucky’s body into the room, trying to better assess the situation— the laid-back, domestic scene apparently didn’t fit whatever he’d been imagining. “Why didn’t you answer your messages?”

Bucky said, “Huh?” but waved Steve in, and said, “You want breakfast? We’re makin’ enough for a squadron, I think.”

“I already ate,” said Steve, as he followed Bucky into the kitchenette. “Smells good though… Mornin’, Darcy.” His eyes were going between the two of them, taking in their easy body language as they moved around each other, noting Bucky’s bare upper body, how uninhibited he seemed compared to just a couple of weeks before…

Steve would have figured it out even if they hadn’t both had the ‘ _I just got laid big-time_ ’ glow about them, and he quickly tried to make an excuse to leave, apparently feeling as though he was intruding on their post-coital refuelling…

“Oh, come on,” said Darcy, when he declined the food. “I know you can pack away an infinite amount of calories and still be hungry. Sit down and eat with us. We just have to finish the eggs and we’ll be all set.”

Steve finally acquiesced, taking a seat on a barstool at the counter, his eyes mostly on his old friend, who was doing his best to manage his jobs one-handed.

Bucky sliced off a pat of butter, speared it with the tip of the knife and nudged it into the warm pan, and then set down the knife so that he could pick up the pan and swirl the melting butter around in it. Darcy gave the eggs and milk a final whisk and handed the bowl to him, and he tipped the slurry into the prepared skillet, and then set the empty bowl down and stirred the eggs gently as they heated up.

Darcy was breaking apart English muffins, dropping the rough halves into an expensive-looking six-slice chrome toaster. She turned the dial to get it going, and then brushed her hands against her shorts before picking up her Starkphone to close the music app. She swore when she saw the number of missed messages on the home screen.

“Holy shit. Are these all from you? God, I’m sorry…”

“I was worried,” said Steve, apologetically. “It was uh… it was such a big day yesterday, and then you weren’t answerin’ your phones…”

“I turned the ringer off of mine,” said Bucky. “Can’t speak for her…”

“I turned my ringer off too,” she said, and Steve saw them look at each other, practically giggling, and he rolled his eyes, which was wasted, as neither of them noticed, both of them completely lost in some kind of private conversation that ended with Bucky using his spatula to swat Darcy playfully on the ass when she moved past him.

He was scrambling the eggs, and he set the spatula down so that he could salt them a little before breaking them up and turning them some more. “So what’s goin’ on?” he asked, finally turning around to give Steve his attention. “You get an update from Stark?”

“Yeah,” said Steve. “He, uh… he didn’t find any kind of tracker.”

“Well,” said Bucky. The eggs were done, and he said, “Could you…” to Darcy, and she came over and used the spatula to help coax them out of the pan as he tilted it over each of the three plates she’d laid out, and then Bucky took up the thread with Steve again. “Not like we were really expectin’ it…”

Darcy added the toasted English muffins to the plates, and started to take them over to the little round dining table along with forks, knives, and the jar of marmalade, Steve standing up to help. She piled a plate high with the cooked sausages, and brought that over too, teasing, “Anybody takes my charred ones, they’re gonna suffer,” as she returned to the fridge. “You want orange juice, Steve?”

“Sure,” he said. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me,” she said, as she poured it. “You bought us all this stuff, right?”

Steve shrugged. “Least I could do. Feel sorta responsible for what happened. Maybe if we’d gone somewhere else… taken more precautions…”

Darcy was quiet. It was no good thinking about _what ifs_ like that. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault, except for the bad guys who’d wanted to hurt them. And more than that, it made her feel guilty, thinking about how if they’d made another call— taken Bucky somewhere else— she probably would have never met him, or only in passing…

“So what now?” she asked, as they all sat down; she noticed that the men waited until she was settled and had picked up her fork, and only then tucked into their own plates of food. “Do we just wait around ’til we find out more? I mean, we may never know, right?” She saw Bucky considering the marmalade jar, probably trying to figure out how he was going to manage the steps involved in getting it onto his toasted muffins. Just getting the lid off by himself would be a feat.

“We’re not just gonna let this go, if that’s what you’re worried about,” said Steve. “But in the meantime… I know Sam wants to get started on his idea for the trigger words… he’ll be here tomorrow, if you’re up for it.”

“Sure,” said Bucky. He’d been quieter, less relaxed since he’d sat down, and Darcy realized, the more she paid attention, that Steve kept staring at him, stealing glances at his hair, at the stump on Bucky’s altered side as he ate. Finally, Bucky pushed himself up and said, “Be right back.”

When he was out of ear-shot, Darcy leaned in a little and said, “Dude, what the hell?” She was a little irritated, and let it show. She reached over and opened up the marmalade jar, and applied a generous amount to Bucky’s English muffins.

“M’sorry,” said Steve. “It’s not… I’m not…” He sighed and stared at his eggs, picking at them. “With the arm gone, and the hair and all… it’s like…” He put the fork down, frustrated with his inability to express himself. “S’almost like lookin’ in a magic mirror or somethin’… like a fairy tale… gettin’ a glimpse of what coulda been, if only I’da gone back to look for him… dragged him outa that ravine… but we didn’t know… how could we know? Nobody coulda survived that fall…”

“God, you guys are like twins or something,” she said. “He had the exact same thought.” Steve looked up at that, wearing a face like he’d been punched in the gut, and she quickly clarified: “Not about blaming you— about it being like… he’s going back, seeing who he might’ve been. Last night, looking at himself… I mean, it was emotional. But it wasn’t just despair, not all of it…” She held Steve’s worried blue eyes. “It was…” She paused, looking for the word. “Hopeful, in a way. I can’t really explain it.”

She stopped talking when she could hear Bucky coming back. He took his seat again, his stump now hidden under a T-shirt. They all ate in silence for a while, until Bucky finally broke it, looking up to Steve as he put down his fork and pushed his empty plate away.

“Hey, you uh… you pretty close with Natália?” Darcy didn’t miss the fact that he had his own name for her— the first time she’d heard it— but didn’t comment on it.

“Tasha? Sure, I guess. As much as anyone can be. She’s not the most…” He drifted off. “Why, what do you need?”

“Was thinkin’ maybe she’d consider giving Darcy some training. Self-defense. I’d do it myself, but figured it’d be better coming from another woman… someone small, like her… can relate to the considerations there.”

Darcy almost snorted at being called ‘small’ in a way that compared her to the Black Widow, but she supposed what he really meant was _short_.

“I’ll ask her,” said Steve. “She’s pretty busy workin’ the new recruits over at HQ, but she’s also spending a fair amount of time here, going through all the security feeds for the Tower. Looking for anomalies, anything that could give us a clue about what happened, if there was a security breach…”

“Is Wells… the fake Wells… is she still…” asked Darcy. She pushed her own plate away, leaving the bottom half an English muffin uneaten on it, already slathered with marmalade, and smiled a little when Bucky’s hand reached over to nab it.

“Still sleepin’, far as I know,” said Steve. “Barton’s practically set up a camp there, waitin’ for any sign… Woman’s gonna have a lot to answer for, if she ever wakes up. That is, if there’s enough left of her to say anything…”

Darcy huffed and shook her head. “She better not be a vegetable. That’d be too easy… I want her to pay…”

Steve’s forehead was pinched, and he changed the subject. “So you guys okay with the food I set you up with? You got any requests?”

“Yeah, about that,” said Darcy. “When do you think it’d be safe for me to go out? Doesn’t Grand Central have a market?”

“Yeah,” said Steve. “It’s huge— got all kinds of stuff. But I’d hold off on venturin’ out just yet, while we’re still lookin’ into the possibility of this leak. You need something, just give me a list; I’ll set you up.”

“You sure?” she said, and then she laughed. “I’m so used to being the one doing all the running around for Jane, it just feels really weird to be on the other side.”

“It’s not a problem, really,” he said. “Speakin’ of Dr. Foster, you need anything for her, just add it to the list. You’re gonna be workin’ with her here in the Tower, right? I mean, when you feel up to it…”

“I don’t know,” she said, and looked to Bucky, who was just looking down at his empty plate. “I hadn’t even really thought about it yet. Still just trying to… I don’t know. Come back to planet Earth. But I need to go see her today, so I’ll find out what she’s planning to do, and how I fit into that… would be nice to keep getting that paycheck…”

“You need anything else?” asked Steve, as he pushed up from his stool. “Laundry? There’s still no services, so we’ve been takin’ turns, sending stuff out for cleaning…” Bucky was stacking all the empty plates with his one hand, and then lifted them together and took them to the sink.

“Sure,” she said. “What, do we just leave it in a bag by the door or something? I feel weird, giving you a pile of our scummy, dirty clothes.”

Steve laughed. “You keep forgettin’ how much time I spent around this guy,” he said, thumbing his hand back toward Bucky. “Both in the service an’ out. Dirty clothes don’t bother me none.” He was heading to the door and he turned and said, “I’ll let you know if I hear anything about… the other stuff. Meantime, don’t be shy ‘bout sending me a list. Seriously. Anything you need.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll get right on it.”

“Good,” he said, and then looked to Bucky, who had come up to stand beside Darcy in the entryway. “You up for a workout this afternoon? S’long as we’re not havin’ a meeting, I got some time… I was thinkin’ we could uh… work on your balance, sortin’ out the new center of gravity…”

“Yeah,” said Bucky. “That’d be good. After lunch?”

“I’ll send you a text,” said Steve, and turned to go, but looked over his shoulder one last time to say, “Turn your phones back on,” trying to sound mock-stern, but Darcy was pretty sure he was blushing. Bucky just grinned as he shut and locked the door.

<<>>

They hand-washed all of the breakfast dishes, and then they wound up lying down on the bed together, going through all of their unread messages.

Darcy had found her reading glasses in one of the boxes of stuff, and after she’d put them on, they’d had a twenty-minute detour of rolling around on the bed, kissing and making out with all their clothes on, after he’d looked over and noticed her wearing them. “See, I knew you’d look cute in glasses,” he’d said, and she’d giggled— shy, unbelieving— until he’d found ways to convince her…

“Glad I checked these,” Bucky was saying now. “There’s one from Stark, in between all the ones from Steve. Wants to know if I can meet with the prosthetist tomorrow.”

“Wow, that was quick,” she said, without looking over. She was thumbing out her own message, seeing if Jane needed her for anything. “You gonna say yes?”

“Might as well,” said Bucky. “S’long as it doesn’t interfere with seein’ Sam.”

She finished her text to Jane, clicked on the button to send it, and then lowered the phone down and took her glasses off, turning to look at him. He was completely focused on his device, painstakingly thumbing out a reply to Stark, one tiny agonizing letter at a time, with his one hand. It struck her then, how disturbingly familiar this felt, because she’d been here before: lying next to a partner in bed, side-by-side but separate, each in his or her own electronic world… not touching, physically or emotionally. This wasn’t that— yet— not even close… having the phones was definitely a good thing, but… 

Her relationship with Bucky up to this point had lacked that kind of electronic intrusion— not by choice, certainly; she’d have done anything for a safe, usable smartphone when they’d been on the road— but now that it was available to them, it felt like she was seeing a preview of the future to come… like any other modern couple, making an effortless and tragic upgrade from the simple comfort of snuggling and conversation, to a parallel existence where the primary partner for each was a glowing screen.

In defiance of the vision, she rolled to put her phone and glasses on the bedside table, and then slid over to invade his personal space, slipping an arm and leg over his left side. “Put that away,” she commanded, and, when he ignored her, she slid down a little to pull up on his shirt, so that she could press kisses into his skin, starting at his abs, and made her way up his chest as she pushed the shirt up further.

Not getting the response she wanted, she moved up higher and put her lips on his nipple, sucking and pulling on it with exaggerated enthusiasm, making him gasp and smile, open mouthed, and shift his torso, but still he kept his face and hand turned away, protecting the phone, trying to finish his text.

She smirked, touching the tip of her tongue to the back of her front teeth, and slid a hand down, sneaking it under the waistband of his pants, and found that he’d skipped underwear that morning, which worked out fine for her. She also found that he was already half-hard, so maybe the nipple-play was actually something to add to her list…

He made a noise in his throat as she touched him, and he said, “I gotta send this…”

“So send it,” she said, and she grinned when he pushed himself up into her hand in spite of himself, even as he struggled to complete the message…

She was doing a lazy up and down, adding a gentle little twist at the top, loving the feel of him as he hardened and grew, and he said, “You’re askin’ for it,” and then he must have finished the text finally, because all at once he tossed the phone aside and rolled into her, making a hungry noise that had her smiling with pleasure, so happy to be the target of that desire…

He pushed himself into her hand again, and he was already leaking, totally ready to go, and he yanked down her pants just enough to get access, his hand quickly finding her, his middle finger slipping in between, parting her, checking, and he smiled, mouth open, shutting his eyes, and she was watching his lips when he asked the question he could already feel the answer to, his voice low… “You ready for me, doll?”

His eyes opened slowly, finding hers, and they just stared at each other for a long, weighty second, their hands down each other’s pants, stilling…

And then all at once they were both moving quickly, scrambling to get their pants the rest of the way off, panting and grinning at each other like a couple of dopes, not even bothering with their shirts as they rushed to bring their bodies together…

She was half on her back, next to him where he was almost spooning her, and he scooped her up closer with his big hand, and she slung the leg nearer to him backward over his hip so he could enter her in a scissor-like position, his own hand quickly guiding him into place where she was spread out…

He dipped in shallowly several times, and once her body had slicked him enough, he segued right into an ambitious pace, hooking his arm behind her knee, holding her open, and she was spurring him on with her moans of approval, wanting it just as badly, a delirious urgency to it at first— just pure need…

And then, when the initial burst was over, they slowed down, and he released her leg, pulling her body into him, spooning her fully without breaking the connection, and he was kissing her neck, holding her to him with his arm under her shirt as he rocked into her, words spilling out on a sigh… “ _God, you feel so good_ …,” and she closed her eyes and surrendered completely to it…

<<>>

They’d dozed off wrapped around each other, pantless, and woke up when Darcy’s phone chimed with an incoming message. She rolled over to check it, and Bucky followed, moving in to spoon her again, his hand running lazily up and down her shapely hip. “Anything important?” he asked, sounding half-asleep.

“It’s Jane,” she said, and took a moment to thumb back a reply. “I’m gonna meet her for lunch in the workshop. Mr. Stark’s taking orders for Thai food. You wanna go?”

“Wouldn’t know what to get,” he said. “Don’t know if I’ve ever had it.”

“I’ll just have them get a bunch of stuff,” she said. “We’ll find out what you like.”

“You sure it’s okay if I come with?” he asked. “She seemed pretty… uncomfortable…”

Darcy finished the text and turned the phone over on the table, and then rolled over to face him again. “All the more reason for you to come. I want her to see that you’re not…”

“A psychopath?”

“I was gonna say, a loose cannon…”

“Uh huh, so you _do_ think I’m a psychopath...”

“Well, sure,” she said, schooling her face into solemnity. “But a very attractive one, and skilled in the sack, so…”

He moved in to kiss her, smirking, and said, “Skilled, huh?”

She was about to zing him with some kind of witty comeback, when they both felt and heard his stomach growl. “Okay, see? You’re definitely coming with. Your body needs Thai food.”

“Well, if you’re sure…”

“It’s not like you’re crashing our date or something. It’s a lunch break. It’s fine. I want you to come.”

“What time is it at?”

“She said to come down in about forty-five.”

“Guess we better get up and put on some pants then,” he said, but he moved in to kiss her again first, and she hummed, happy, and wrapped her legs around him, trying to pull him in, and he chuckled and said, “You’re gonna make us miss the food if you keep doin’ that.”

“Mmmm; maybe it’d be worth it after all,” she teased, moving her hips against him, but he put his hand between them, against her chest, reluctantly pulling away even as he smiled at her words.

“Much as I agree with that statement, I think I better do everything I can to improve on that lousy first impression I made on your friend. I ain’t gonna show up to lunch smellin’ like a brothel…”

She made an exaggerated sad face, pushing her bottom lip out as he extricated himself from their nest, but broke into a little laugh, unable to hold the frown when he looked back at her again, his eyes sparkling, and then she fell onto her back with an exhale as he went off to get cleaned up.

<<>>

“Here, try the tom kha kai,” Darcy said, passing him the styrofoam soup cup and a plastic spoon. “If you don’t like that, you can keep filling up on noodles.”

Stark hadn’t joined them for lunch, so it was just the two of them with Jane, eating in a little break room off the workshop, and Jane’s persistent discomfort was making it awkward. Rather than being quiet, Jane was coping with her nerves by asking him a string of blunt questions, unintentionally bordering on rude, while Darcy did her best to soften things by focusing on the food.

“S’not that I don’t like it,” said Bucky, taking a sip of the fragrant, milky soup. “I just… I ain’t used to food with so much flavor. S’good though.”

“What did you eat when you were working for Hydra,” asked Jane, earning a dirty look from Darcy, for her choice of words. She made it sound like killing for Hydra was just another experience he’d list on his _curriculum vitae_.

“Whatever they gave me,” he said. “Think I got most of my nutrition through a tube when I was unconscious. In the field, it was rations, like any operative. When I broke programming, it took a while to uh… to figure out how to eat like a regular person again…”

Darcy had never pressed him for any details about his captivity, and now, imagining him being tube-fed after being knocked out at the end of a mission, she suddenly lost her appetite, and pushed her dish of green curry away. She’d already eaten her fill of it anyway, and had been shoveling it in on autopilot.

“Tony was up all night, working on the arm,” said Jane. “You gonna have him improve it? Or build a new one?”

“Don’t know yet,” he said. “I’m meetin’ with a prosthetist tomorrow, I guess. Might just get something more… conventional.”

“Oh,” said Jane, and she sounded a little surprised. “I assumed you’d be getting an upgrade, joining the team… Steve seemed to think…”

“We don’t know what we’re doing yet,” said Darcy, interrupting, and then frowned. She didn’t like being so pissy and overprotective, but Jane’s behavior was pulling it out of her, making her feel all Mama-bear. Bucky, for his part, didn’t seem bothered by Jane’s questions. But then, he probably thought he couldn’t afford to be— getting ruffled would play right into Jane’s preconceived notions of his being some kind of brute.

They were saved from the ongoing tension when Bucky’s phone chimed, and he checked it and sat up straight, saying, “That’s Steve. I, uh… I think I’m gonna go a little early, get warmed up.”

“I don’t know how you can work out after eating Thai food,” said Darcy, sighing as she looked at the collection of containers she’d personally emptied. “I feel like taking another nap.”

“S’not gonna be strenuous,” said Bucky, standing up. “Just gonna figure out my balance a bit more. Every move I make... it all feels different.”

Under normal circumstances she would have stood up to give him a kiss, but everything felt weird and awkward with Jane watching them. He seemed to be feeling it too, because he just gave her a platonic squeeze on the shoulder and then nodded to Jane. “It was nice talkin’ with you, Dr. Foster.”

Darcy smirked internally, because she knew that Bucky’s use of her title would earn him some points, in spite of Jane’s apparent pig-headed resolve to judge him uncharitably. Jane had worked hard for the honorific, but still had to fight sometimes to have it acknowledged by men in a way that didn’t feel patronizing.

Moreover, Darcy also knew that Bucky hadn’t said it to score points— that he was just being himself: polite, respectful. She hoped that, in spite of her sour demeanor, Jane would be forced to admit that there was more to him than the scary, brainwashed assassin they’d seen on the internet.

Still, as soon as Bucky was gone, she turned to Jane and said, “Why are you being such a dick?” 

“I’m not…. being a dick,” said Jane, as she started to clean up the empty takeout containers. “I was perfectly polite.” Darcy watched her fussing and almost laughed. Jane never cleaned up after takeout— that was Darcy’s job. It couldn’t be a more obvious sign of the woman’s discomfort.

“Okay, whatever,” she grumbled, deciding to drop it. “Do you need me for anything? I’ve got my laptop back, so I can organize more data, or… whatever you need.” She stood and took over the cleanup, setting aside the containers of untouched food to take back to her apartment for later. “Thanks for getting them to bring my stuff over, by the way.” She chuckled. “I wonder if whoever packed it all was a snoop and found my vibrator. I’m pretty sure the bag was zipped up when I left it…” Her face sobered. “God, I hope it wasn’t Hawkeye…”

Jane looked up, her eyes softer now, maybe a little contrite. “When you said before… that you don’t know what you’re doing yet… does that mean you don’t know if you’re going to stay on?”

“I don’t know; are you?” asked Darcy. “Are you gonna go back to the Redoubt once it’s fixed up?” She’d taken all the garbage over to a big trash can in the corner of the break room and came back to slump in her chair again. “Cause I’ll be honest with you… I don’t know if I can go back there.”

“I get it,” said Jane softly, after a minute of quiet thought. “I still have nightmares about… well, you know.” Darcy knew she was talking about Malekith, the creature who would have killed Jane without a second thought— tried to— and that Jane could no more utter his name easily than Darcy could speak of Wells… or whatever her real name was.

“We don’t have to go back there,” Jane said, her voice assured. “Pepper already said she can hire someone else to take care of the place, and we can work here instead.”

“Good to know,” said Darcy, unable to meet Jane’s eyes. Her thoughts were all over the place, but none of them was screaming that she couldn’t wait to get back to work for Jane, and she didn’t yet know what that meant. It’d be stupid — to put it mildly— to walk away from this job, and it scared her that a part of her seemed to be considering it.

“Hey,” said Jane, reaching out to grab her hand, and Darcy took a deep breath in and out, feeling the olive branch being offered through the contact. “Take all the time you need, okay? If you want some work as a distraction, I can totally give you that. But if you need more time to just… I don’t know. Think and rest and… I’ll be here, when you’re ready to work again.”

Darcy squeezed her friend’s hand, unable to reply with words, afraid she might start blubbering. Jane seemed to understand, because she squeezed back, and then dropped her hand and stood up, nervously wiping her hands on her pants. “I’m, uh… I’m going to get back to it. Call me later if you want, okay?”

“Is someone gonna feed you dinner if I don’t handle it?” she asked.

“Yeah,” said Jane. “Sure. Tony’s still got the AI shut down, but he has these auxiliary programs set up to remind us to take breaks, get food… that sort of thing. Pepper made him do it.”

“And you actually listen to them?” Darcy raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“Well… sometimes,” said Jane, honestly, and finally cracked a smile. “I mean, they’re no substitute for a real assistant, that’s for sure. But I’ll be fine. I’m not gonna starve. Really.”

“Okay,” said Darcy. “I think I’m gonna, uh… go back to my room and organize some stuff on the laptop for a while. I can send you the stuff I was working on when… before…”

“Sounds good,” said Jane, sparing her having to finish the thought, and then she was out the door, leaving Darcy to stare at the food containers, feeling like something had just been decided, even if it wasn’t entirely clear yet.

<<>>

“Oh my God, we have to get this,” she said. She was sitting at the desk in the bedroom, staring at her open laptop— instead of crunching numbers for Jane, she was browsing Amazon with Bucky.

“What is it,” he asked, using his feet to roll himself closer, so he could see the screen. She’d given him the only chair on wheels in the apartment, and had dragged a wooden chair over to the desk for herself.

They’d sat down to eat the leftover Thai food for dinner, straight out of the containers, and it’d been another opportunity to discover how much two-handed people took for granted: if you didn’t have an extra hand to hold onto the container, it was very difficult to keep it from tipping over. This had prompted Darcy to pull up Amazon on the computer, and do a search for adaptive kitchen tools.

“Check this out,” she said. “It’s so cool. This cutting board set? It has suction cups to keep it steady on the counter, and then the knife is a curved blade with a handle that you rock, see?”

He leaned in to take a look, and hummed his approval. “Yeah, that’d work.”

“And this board has the vice jaws _and_ the spikes for holding the food. We could totally kick ass in the kitchen if we get this… I’m adding it to the list.”

Inspired by Steve’s pretend Wish List that he’d created to send messages to Bucky, Darcy had started a real list for supplies. She was glad that Bucky was totally on board with it— it was like she’d talked about, just a couple days before… trying to set the intention, to turn a fantasy into a reality. Even if it was just about being able to cook something together in the kitchen.

Now if only she could apply that to her career: it’d been bugging her since lunch, the awareness that she wasn’t looking forward to going back to that job, glad she had an excuse to ease back into it slowly. She knew her fantasy wasn’t to be Jane’s runner forever, but it would be idiotic to give up that steady pay…

She was thinking about it later, as they soaked together in the jacuzzi tub, and finally brought up the tension she’d felt at lunch: “I’m sorry Jane’s still being weird to you,” she said, as she leaned back into his warm body. He was pampering her, slowly cleaning all of her parts with the lather from a silky-soft bar of almond-scented soap.

“Lift,” he said, nudging her right arm out of the water so that he could run his hand, soapy and warm, over her shoulder and down to her elbow, and then back up the underside to her armpit.

“I swear, she’s not usually such a jerk,” she continued. I mean, she’s got that whole Aspie thing going on that makes her come off as an asshole to people who don’t know her, but they just don’t get that—”

“Hey,” he said, stopping her, letting her arm sink back into the water. “I didn’t think she was bein’ a jerk. She’s just watchin’ out for you. She doesn’t know me. Don’t worry about it. S’right for her to be… nervous around me.”

“I don’t like it,” said Darcy, anyway. “I was thinking back to how I acted when you first came to the place. I was nervous… jumpy. It sucks.” She frowned. "God, maybe that's what this is about— it's not really Jane I'm pissed at; it's me..."

“Naw,” he said, and then he chuckled a little as he soaped up her other arm. “I mean, yeah, you were jumpy at first, but hell, so was I… and it was kinda cute, how you kept bumpin’ into me. And you were funny about it. Helped me to relax… smile. Inside my head, leastwise, even if I couldn’t show it right off.”

He was working on her left side now, her arm resting bent against her chest so that he could reach it, and he was even cleaning between her fingers, linking his hand through hers to massage the soap into all the spaces before running back over the top of her hand and up her forearm.

“God, and your mouth,” he said. “Think the first thing you actually said to me had the F word in it.” He laughed again and finished up her left arm, releasing it. “Nah, I liked you, right from the start…”

She rolled sideways in the water, so she could look up at him, and he gazed down at her fondly, doing that thing she loved where he bit his lower lip as he smiled. She moved up a little to press her hand against the side of his face and kiss him, ending with a slide of her thumb down the darkened cleft of his chin. She was taking a breath to tell him how much she loved him, when one of their phones loudly chimed, from where they’d left them on one of the banquettes. A split-second later, the other phone chimed as well.

“Better check it,” he said. “If someone’s tryin’ to reach both of us, might be somethin’ important. Don’t want Stevie tryin’ to bust down our door again.”

She grinned and drifted backward in the tub away from him, her breasts floating on the soapy water. “Did you see him blushing before? It was so cute…” She carefully stepped out of the tub and wrapped herself up in one of the gigantic luxury towels, and then padded over to the phones, her hair dripping. She picked hers up, tapped on it to wake it, and swiped to read the message.

“What is it?” he asked, sitting up a bit when he saw the look on her face.

“Wells,” she said, turning her head to meet his eyes. “The fake one. She woke up.”


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: fairly descriptive panic attack within  
> \-------------------------------

“Couldn’t she be faking it?” asked Darcy.

It was the next day, and they were discussing it in the conference room with Steve, Sam, and Barton, who’d ended his angry vigil at the upstate HQ’s trauma center, where he’d also spent an uncomfortable hour making small talk with a trio of federal agents.

Since the fall of SHIELD, it’d become increasingly unclear who exactly had jurisdiction over incidents involving the Avengers or their staff. Normally, they’d had no issue with the FBI handling the routine arrest and prosecution of the criminals they tangled with, but things got significantly stickier in an incident that could expose Bucky to the agency.

Steve had made it clear that under no circumstances would they be serving up his friend to the feds, who would no doubt be forced to consider prosecuting him for war crimes and acts of domestic terrorism, and so everyone at HQ was sticking to the same, agreed-upon tale that focused on the attempted theft of one of the group’s two Quinjets.

The federal agents, for their part, were clearly aware that they were being handed a very nice cover story, but with Captain America signing off on it, they didn’t have an issue with it, as long as all the right paperwork was filled out. They were simply waiting, like Barton, to see if the alleged hijacker was going to wake up and answer any questions. Still, it’d been awkward— for everyone involved— to maintain the pretense of the lie.

As soon as Barton had entered the conference room, Darcy had stood up to give him a hug— a real one this time; not settling for one of his side-by-sides—and told him how sorry she was about the real Wells.

Bucky had stood up too, and also said he was sorry, and Barton acknowledged it the way he knew it was meant— shaking his head as he said, “Not your fault.” He looked wrecked, though— he didn’t even seem to notice that Bucky had lost an arm since the last time he’d seen him.

“Doc says she isn’t fakin’— couldn’t be,” he was saying now. “There’s no visual tracking, some other things they test for that there’s no way she could fool them on. Don’t mean she’s gonna stay that way— could take days, weeks… even months to regain a higher level of consciousness. Or she could just stay like this forever, in a vegetative state.”

“While the rest of us pay to keep her alive and fed and cared for, right?” Darcy didn’t bother to hide her disgust.

“We don’t even know her role in Dr. Wells’ death,” said Steve. “Whether she or someone else ordered it… if she handled it personally… But she was obviously an important piece of whatever organization she belonged to… versatile… taking both undercover and command positions… at least she’s been taken out of that, and hopefully it hurt them, knocked them back a little, whoever they are.”

“They don’t know her condition,” Sam pointed out. “For all they know, she could be sellin’ them out, spilling all of their secrets right now. That’s gotta be causing some kinda problems for them…”

“It just feels like another dead end,” Darcy complained. “We still don’t have any answers. What are we supposed to do now?”

“We keep moving forward,” said Steve, decisively. “Work with what we already have, and keep adding to it when we get anything new.”

“What we already have?” scoffed Bucky. “We ain’t got shit.”

“We can work on the triggers,” said Sam. “That’s something, at least. That way even if someone found a way to get to you again, you’d have more than a fightin’ chance, with your enhanced strength… even without the arm.”

“You guys mind if I take off?” asked Barton, pushing himself away from the big table. “I’m meetin’ Tasha…”

“No problem,” said Steve. “You’ll let us know if your network picks up any more leads…”

“Course,” said Barton. He gave them a curt nod, and left the room.

“God,” said Darcy, once he was gone. “He looked awful.”

“He’ll be all right,” said Steve, the words sounding like an order, and she couldn’t tell if he really believed it, or if it was just the kind of thing he said, to make everyone feel better.

“So about the words,” said Bucky, shifting to look at Sam. “What you got planned?”

“Well…” said Sam, and he leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “You’re gonna think it sounds half-baked, but hear me out: I looked into how long it’d take to read out an entire dictionary… you take the English language, for starters…”

“That’d take forever,” said Darcy, interrupting right away.

“Not really,” said Sam. “You’d be surprised. Less than fifty hours, for the whole thing.”

“You’re gonna have him read the dictionary?” asked Steve, with more than a hint of skepticism.

“No— just hear me out, aight? He’s not gonna read it; I’m gonna have him listen to it. We can measure him closely— check his vitals while he’s listening, watch for signs of stress. I already got a bunch of my vets signed up, reading it out, recording it. They’re averaging a page a minute, and I got nine of ‘em workin’ at it. And I’m already talking to some kids over at the University, to read out the other languages I think we should cover. Russian, obviously— but also German…”

“Spanish,” broke in Darcy.

Sam nodded. “French, Mandarin…”

“What about the ones where it seems like he doesn’t know the language, but they built in just a phrase or two?” said Darcy. “Like the Arabic?”

“We’ll do those after,” said Sam, and turned his attention back to Bucky. “I think it’s safe to assume your handlers would have kept the most important triggers to their native languages, or were using the ones already programmed in by previous handlers, so Russian, German, English… start with those. But we can try out as many as you want, see if any feel familiar to you—if they do, we can add them to the list.”

“So that’s it?” asked Bucky. “I just gotta sit in a room and listen to people readin’ words to me?”

“Hopefully,” said Sam. “If you show signs of stress, then we can stop and deal with it, and target those words for desensitization. There’s some risk, obviously— we have no way of knowing whether you have any one-word triggers.”

“But even if he did,” said Darcy, “wouldn’t he consider the person on the recording his handler or whatever you call it? Would that even work, if it’s not in person?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” said Bucky. “Least this way, nobody’d be there to control me, and you’d have time to dry me out.”

“We can get started right away, if you’re ready,” said Sam. “I brought yesterday’s recordings with me— my guys already made it to letter J.”

“Shouldn’t you start with Russian?” asked Steve. “Since that’s what they used to activate the programming?”

“We know Pierce was his last handler, so we gotta assume there could be some English triggers, too,” said Sam. “I’m guessing that Russian sequence is an old one… something so deeply imbedded they could count on it for a dynamic situation like that, where he was gonna be actively resisting. We’re gonna work on those words, specifically, for sure. Desensitizing him to each of them individually, and as the sequence. Once we’re done with the English dictionary, we’ll move onto Russian, see if there’s anything else he responds to.”

He turned back to Bucky. “Tony said we could use Banner’s safe room, next to the lab, if you want maximum protection. But we’re fine with you doing it wherever you feel comfortable.”

Bucky thought about it for a minute. “I think the safe room,” he said, finally. “Just in case… that way you’d have time to find Steve… shut me down. Without the arm…”

He looked to Steve, held his eyes. “You okay with that? Stoppin’ me? You don’t gotta… hurt me or nothin’, unless I’m bein’ a real scrappy bastard…” He smirked, teasing him. “Shouldn’t be too hard for Captain America to restrain a one-armed guy…”

Steve grinned. “I think I can handle it.”

“All right then,” said Sam, standing up. “You got some time today?”

“No time like the present,” said Bucky.

<<>>

Dr. Banner’s safe room in the Tower was nothing like the one at the Redoubt— this was just a spare, white room with tall ceilings, bare of any furniture other than the desk and chair that Sam had moved in for Bucky. It did have the same unbreakable windows, though, and Darcy felt a pang of anxiety as she remembered the spiderweb splinters that had just barely formed after Bucky had pounded over and over into the ones at the Redoubt, full of rage and despair and the certainty that he was going to be lost again, having failed to take his own life.

She wondered if he was reliving it too, watching him closely as he sat down at the desk and rested his arm on it. Sam was setting up a wireless system borrowed from Stark, that would continuously monitor Bucky’s vital signs; it was state-of-the-art tech that would measure not only his blood pressure and heart rate, but also his blood oxygen level, respiration rate, and core body temperature, all with a simple wrist cuff that had two finger-cuff attachments, and a remote patch for the temperature readings. All the data was transmitted in real time to a tablet that Sam could monitor from outside the room. Another tablet with the audio files was on the table, and Sam showed Bucky how to play and pause them, using an unrelated music file to demonstrate.

Once he was done with the setup, Sam turned to Darcy and said, “Why don’t you hang out in here for a few minutes. Talk to him; help him relax before we start. I’ll let you out before we start playin’ the audio files.” Then he stepped out of the room and shut the door.

There was a click as the intercom switched on, and then Sam’s disembodied voice came into the room. “You guys hear me okay? Wanna get a baseline for his readings, in the absence of any stressors.”

“You sure that’s possible?” asked Darcy. “I’m feeling a little stressed already myself, just being in here.” Her anxiety had increased ten-fold with the sound of his voice coming through, seemingly all around them, just like Wells’ had when she’d read those awful words to Bucky.

And then something strange happened, and she looked at Bucky, wondering if he was hearing it too— the way Sam’s voice was getting muffled, thick… like she was hearing him from underwater, and it was so unusual that she almost laughed, but there wasn’t anything funny about it, and the more she tried to figure out what was happening, the more blurry things seemed to get, her fingers tingling, a strange cold weight settling inside her stomach.

She could see Bucky looking at her with concern, and then he was standing up, saying her name, but it sounded so far away… and he was trying to get his fingers out of the monitoring cuffs, but he couldn’t without another hand, and she was stepping back, blinking, dizzy, a coppery taste flooding her mouth, like an old, dirty penny, her head buzzing, and all she could think was _something’s wrong, something’s wrong… what’s happening; something’s wrong_ …

And then all at once it escalated, a feeling like she couldn’t breathe, or she was breathing too much— she couldn’t tell which, like she was hyperventilating and suffocating at the same time, and she wondered if Sam had poisoned them, her legs now failing her, shaking, as she sank to the floor, trying to get a breath, and Bucky was there, saying her name, and his voice was muffled too, and she couldn’t do it… couldn’t get enough air…

And she might have blacked out for a moment, because then Sam was there, on the floor with her— how did he get there? She could hear him saying, from far away, “It’s okay; I got this,” telling Bucky to back off, to give her some space, and she was trying to look at his eyes, Sam’s kind brown eyes, but she still couldn’t get a breath, and she was shivering, so cold, but sweating at the same time, her arms clenched in front of her chest, each breath a struggle, and some sidelined part of her brain remembered an article she’d read about heart attacks in women… the anecdotes about flop sweat, shortness of breath… _God, am I dying?_

“You’re okay,” Sam was saying, as though he could hear her thoughts, her fears. “You’re safe. You’re having a panic attack.” And he leaned over to Bucky for a minute— he was swearing, still trying to pull the cuffs off, ripping them against his pants— and Sam took a moment to get them unhooked, and then turned to Darcy again.

“I know you’re scared right now, but you’re not in any danger. You’re not dying— you’re safe. Try to focus on my voice, stay right here with me. You might be seeing some things, remembering some things, but those are just thoughts you’re having right now— just thoughts; they’re not real. You’re safe.”

“Bucky—” She managed to gasp it out, just one word, sucking in breath like she had crested above the waterline for one precious second, and Sam said, “Bucky’s here. He’s safe too. There’s no danger here. I want you to focus on your breathing. Go ahead and try to breathe with me, okay? I’m gonna breathe in real slow, and then let it out. You can watch me doin’ it, give it a try…”

And she did, she tried it, grasping onto his words like a lifeline, and he was talking her through it, encouraging her the whole way, saying, “You got this,” and, “I’m real proud of you,” and after what felt like a very long time, she started to come out of it— the shuddering, clenching feeling inside her chest eventually loosening, like a fist relaxing, letting go, and she was just breathing through it, still trying to match him, keeping it slow and steady, and in his calm voice, he said, “You’re doin’ real good, Darcy. Real good.”

Finally, when he could see that her breathing was evened out, that she was fully there again, Sam said, “Can I do anything for you? Can you tell me what you need?”

“I need Bucky,” she said, and a big tear slipped out of her right eye and tracked down her cheek, and Sam nodded, his eyes soft as he squeezed her shoulder.

“He’s right here. He’s right here, Darcy,” he said, as he backed up.

And then Bucky was there, pulling her into his lap with his one arm, and she collapsed into him, and she kept saying, “I’m sorry,” knowing it was stupid to apologize, but instinctively saying it anyway, not able to stop it, angry for feeling so helpless, embarrassed by the spectacle she’d created.

He was making soothing sounds, stroking her hair as she sat in his lap while she cried, and she heard Sam say, “She’s gonna be fine,” and then, “I think maybe gettin’ her to a different environment would be a good idea.”

Bucky’s mouth was right by her ear, and he whispered, “Grab onto me, doll; can you do that?” and she sniffled in response and wrapped herself around him, sinking further into the comfort of his smell, and he pushed up, rocking for a moment as he found his balance, and then he carried her out of the room.

“I think we’re done here for today,” he said softly, to Sam.

“We’ll pick it up another time,” said Sam. “No rush.”

Bucky had his arm under her hips, supporting her, and he took her straight to the elevator, where he said, “Hold up your hand, doll,” and turned his body so that she could reach out, still shaky, her palm damp, and somehow she managed to activate the palm scanner to call the car. Once inside, he had her pull the key card for the VIP floors out of his pocket, and place it in his hand, so that he could turn and swipe it, pressing the button for their floor without letting go of her.

A couple minutes later they were at the door to their apartment, and she followed his commands, scanning her palm again to unlock the door, his own arm still wrapped beneath her… and then they were safely in the room, and he took her to the bed and lay her down and just held her, until she fell asleep, utterly exhausted.

<<>>

She woke up about an hour later, feeling like she had a hangover. Her ribs were hurting and her whole chest felt bruised; apparently the hyperventilating had done bad things. Bucky slipped out of bed to fetch her pills and a glass of water; she took one pill and then dozed a bit more while she waited for the medicine to kick in.

“What time is it,” she said, when she opened her eyes again. Her voice felt old, her throat rough. She knew he was awake, just lying there, watching over her.

“Uh…” He twisted, to check his phone. “Bout four-thirty.”

“I feel stupid,” she said, blinking, her eyes dry and itchy. “I know that’s dumb but I feel it anyway.”

His voice was soft in the dimly-lit room. “So what you’re sayin’ is… you’re stupid, but you’re also stupid for feelin’ stupid…”

She had to chuckle a little when he put it like that, and she was relieved to feel that it didn’t hurt anymore, and that she could laugh— the Oxy was doing its job: not just physically, but taking the emotional edge off as well. She sat up a little and reached out for the glass of water still sitting on the bedside table.

“That was really scary,” she said, after she’d taken a drink and set the glass down again. She slid back into the bed and snuggled closer to him. “I’ve never felt anything like that. I had nightmares from the other stuff that happened, the stuff with Jane… I’ve had anxiety— bad anxiety… but this…”

He was running his hand up and down her forearm, where it lay against his chest, and he said, “Can’t tell you how many times it’s happened to me, since I broke out. On the street it ain’t so noticeable— you’re just another one of the crazies— but when you’re around regular people… makes it worse, knowin’ people are lookin’ at you, scared… had to walk out of a lot of places, feelin’ the walls cavin’ in…”

He shifted his hips and pulled her a little closer. “Had a bad one in the Army surplus store… probably best place for it, actually… people knowin’ what it was… had a guy talk me through it, just like Sam did to you. It’s actually what got me thinkin’ about callin’ Steve… The way that guy in the store was talkin’ to me, helpin’ me… I remembered doin’ that for Steve, back in the old days, when he was sufferin’ through an asthma attack… how I used to look out for him, and how it kinda flipped, after he got big… then it was him, lookin’ after me… not just in the war, but later…” He sighed. “Tryin’ to pull me out of it, when I was doin’ my best to kill him…”

She was quiet, just listening to him, grounded and soothed by the sound of his voice, the things he was unboxing, sharing with her. “Sittin’ in that store, thinkin’ about Steve… I think it was the first time I felt like maybe I… maybe it’d be okay to want somethin’ better than hidin’. Thought maybe after three years… they hadn’t come for me yet…”

He turned and rubbed his jaw against the top of her head, and she responded, tightening her arm around his body. “Anyway… didn’t mean to tease you ‘bout feelin’ stupid. It’s… you’re not stupid, but I know what that feels like. It’s like you’re bein’ forced to be vulnerable, when you’re… God, when you’re least equipped to deal with it.”

“What do you see when it happens?” she asked quietly.

“Depends… sometimes it’s me, fallin’ from the train… feelin’ it…” He was stroking her hair, smoothing it back above her ear as she lay on her side, watching his face. He closed his eyes and said, “Sometimes it’s Hydra… cuttin’ me up… people I’ve killed, their eyes… watchin’ me do it… sometimes it’s nothin’ at all… just feelin’ like I can’t breathe, like I gotta… shut down.”

“Is that what happened at that house? The creepy house we went to?”

He frowned and opened his eyes to gaze over her shoulder, into some invisible memory. “No… not exactly. That was… different. Still not sure what that was. Think I was rememberin’ somethin’, but… was more like how I felt with the words… like I couldn’t… my body wasn’t my own to move. I was… scared…”

She reached out, ran her thumb down the center of his chin, a gesture she was becoming addicted to, and the motion tugged down on his mouth, causing his lips to part slightly, and he looked down at her again, his eyes a little glossy, like silver-blue crystal, and she wanted to climb into them, curl up inside, safe.

“I don’t think I can go back in that room again,” she said. “I wanted to be there for you, but…”

“Don’t want you there if it makes you feel that way,” he said, his thumb stroking along her cheekbone. “Me and Sam can handle it. You don’t gotta go back in there.”

She tried to get closer, but there was too much in the way— clothes, covers, and she felt like it was all stifling, and she shoved the sheets down, feeling hot, pushed her shorts off. She sat up a little and started pulling her shirt off, and he helped her with it, and she got her bra off, and then helped him with his own clothes, throwing or kicking them onto the floor, and then fell back into him, naked, running her hand up and down the line of hair that ran down his center. It should have felt vulnerable in the wake of her panic attack, but it was the opposite… a comfort to be there with him, skin-to-skin, alive, like they were the only two things that mattered…

Her voice was soft, almost shy. “Is it weird that I want you in me right now?”

He rolled into her a little, and she took his hand, moved it down, asking him to touch her, and he said, “Not weird,” and they stayed there a while, kissing and touching each other, quiet, just breathing together, and when she was ready, he held himself steady so she could fit herself around him, little by little, and then he moved his hand to her backside to hold her to him, exhaling.

“I’m gonna wear you out,” she joked, the words airy as she moved her hips against him, gently, like a breath…

“Not possible,” he said, and he kissed her as he moved inside. “Never gonna be worn out on this… bein’ with you…”

“Never’s a long time,” she said, and it made her eyes sting.

“I know,” he said, and they didn’t talk any more after that, their bodies saying everything.

<<>>

They stayed in bed for the rest of the afternoon, Bucky only getting up to make toast— he wasn’t able to put the marmalade on by himself, and had given up, frustrated, returning to the bedroom suite with a pile of dry toast on a plate. “We need that board with the prongs, or the holder or whatever,” he said. “And somethin’ to open jars.”

“You should’ve said something,” she said, feeling bad for not helping him. “Do you want me to—”

“Nah, it’s fine,” he said. “Stay put.”

He’d offered a slice to Darcy, but she declined, and actually banned him from the bed while he was eating it, saying, “You can never get all the crumbs out. You wind up just having to strip the bed. I know this from experience.” Then she frowned and said, “We should strip the bed anyway; it’s like a mine-field of wet spots in here.”

Bucky laughed and said, “We gonna add those to the laundry?”

“That’s just mean,” she said. “Making Steve handle our sex sheets… I wonder when’s the last time he got any…”

“Doll, I don’t know that he’s _ever_ gotten any…”

“You serious?” she said, rolling on to her side to watch him. She was hugging a pillow while propping her head up on it. “God, now I feel bad, teasing him, even in absentia. Wait, what about all those dancing girls? Like, way back when he was on the war-bond circuit? I mean, I know girls aren’t his thing, but… but I mean, don’t you think…”

“Hard to say,” said Bucky. “Not like he was the type to kiss and tell, in any case…” He was sitting at the laptop, eating his toast, scrolling through a recipe page Darcy had found the night before. “Jeez, why does everything have to have twenty-seven ingredients in the future? Whatever happened to good old-fashioned chicken noodle soup?”

“Put that in the search,” she suggested. “Old fashioned.” She was trying hard to hold in her grin. “Or ‘old-timey’… or how about ‘grandpa’s’… as in, ‘Grandpa’s Best Old-Timey Soup’.” It felt good, being silly with him… like medicine for her emotional fatigue.

He gave her the side-eye and put down his toast. “You better not be teasin’ me about my age, babydoll…”

She giggled and then shrieked and pulled the covers up when he stood up and started to stalk his way back to the bed, licking his lips, and then squealed again when he pounced, and they rolled around in the sheets, Darcy giggling as he captured her and attacked her with kisses that turned tender, and she laughed and gasped in between and said, “We can’t… there’s no more dry land in here,” pretending to resist, and then finally relented, powerless to his attention, grateful for it…

<<>>

Bucky had tried to persuade her to let him postpone the appointment with the prosthetist that evening, saying she should rest, and not be alone— that panic attacks were sneaky, wore you out in ways you couldn’t predict, but she was having none of it. She showered and put on fresh clothes, and went with him when he went down to 79 for the appointment.

The prosthetist was a young, thirty-something man named Ayaz Hameed; he had a prematurely-receding hairline which he kept neatly trimmed, skin the color of good cappuccino, and a row of perfectly straight white teeth in his big, friendly smile. He had a pair of black plastic-framed glasses hanging against his chest, attached to a purple strap that looped around his neck, and his hand was soft and warm as he shook each of theirs. Darcy liked him immediately.

They were meeting in Mr. Stark’s gigantic workshop, and after the briefest of introductions, Stark had left them to it, while he returned to work on something with Jane on the other side of the room. Jane hadn’t mentioned the panic attack, which meant she didn’t know about it; Darcy made a mental note to thank Sam for his discretion.

“Why don’t you tell me a little bit about what you’re hoping to build,” said Hameed, taking a seat on a metal stool, “and I’ll tell you what sorts of options we can provide, and then we can figure out how to integrate that into whatever you have planned with Tony.”

“Don’t have anything planned, as of yet,” said Bucky, as he pulled out a stool for Darcy before finding one for himself. There was a messy collection of tools and scraps of metal and electrical components on the workbench in front of him, and Bucky idly picked at them as he talked. “Thing is, I was thinkin’ maybe I’d start with something more… ordinary.”

“Sure,” said Hameed. “Why don’t you take a look at the kind of things I do…” He pulled up a photo gallery on his tablet and navigated to a page for full arm replacements, and slid it over so that Bucky could scroll through. There were pictures of the prosthetic arms alone, but also photos of real people being fitted, most of them men. Some of them had multiple amputations, and other signs of injury, like burns.

There were purely cosmetic options, which were not very functional but looked like natural arms, completely bionic arms that had a range of functions, and a variety of hybrids, which blended cosmetic concerns with functionality. There was even a line of specialty hands that could be fitted onto modular prostheses, depending on the individual’s needs and hobbies.

“We usually start a new amputee with one of the cosmetic options,” said Hameed, “because the weight of a bionic arm can be a significant barrier… can discourage rehabilitation. Obviously in your case, that would be less of a concern. If you’re looking for something that draws less attention, you could go with one of the hybrids, and have a silicone glove for the hand which would appear very life-like.”

Bucky was impressed— “And all this time I’ve been walkin’ around with work gloves on,” he said, as he scrolled through the photo gallery. “Didn’t even know this kinda thing was possible…”

“Is it true that the tech for arms is lagging behind legs?” asked Darcy. “I was talking to someone who sort of implied that, but this stuff looks pretty amazing to me.”

Hameed looked at her, raising his eyebrows as he took stock of her interest. “Hands are… complicated. With a leg, you’re really focused on load-bearing issues, mobility… long-term comfort for the patient. Those are concerns that are generally easier to address than the very complex questions of simulating the natural movements and capabilities of human hands… the lack of tactile sensation in a prosthesis is a major issue when it comes to replacing what a real hand communicates to a person… Still, there’ve been some really exciting avenues opening up in bionics, using brain chips to control discrete movements…”

When he could see that Darcy was actually listening, he continued. “There’s also the question of cost, of course. Say a person needs an arm and a leg, but can’t afford both. Nine out of ten times, she’s going to pick the leg. People would rather have a leg, be able to get around without a wheelchair, and put off getting the arm. Or, people get an arm, but get frustrated by the work involved in learning to use it, wind up not wearing it. More money ends up going to legs. And where the money goes, that’s where you get the most research.”

“Stark Industries should fund and research more stuff like this,” she said, pitching her voice a little bit higher. “Seems like a no-brainer, with the company’s robotics. They could devote a whole department to it.” Hameed grinned at her and then tilted his head, considering. “You ever think about a career in something like this?”

“No,” said Darcy, “but I have to admit, I think all this stuff is cool as fuck.” She winced a little at her unprofessional language, but Hameed was unfazed.

“You should look into it,” he said. “The basic program is only two years, if you already have a bachelor’s.”

“I was like, one credit away from a bachelor’s in poli-sci; does that count?”

“You’d have to take some science courses on the side to get up to speed, but with your connections,” said Hameed, indicating the room they were seated in, “I doubt you’d have a problem getting in.”

Stark had meandered over, grabbed a couple of components off the workbench with his left hand, while he took a bite out of a large apple with his other. “Talking about me again?” he asked, after he swallowed the bite. “I heard my name.”

“I was just saying that S.I. should fund prosthetics research. Maybe even create a department for it in R&D,” said Darcy. “It would seem like the prefect redemption, after all the money you guys put into weapons. I wonder how many limbs your company’s armaments have blown off.”

Hameed turned his head and coughed to hide a snicker, while Stark just lowered the apple and said, “Ouch.” Then he raised one eyebrow and said, “Not a bad idea, though. Why don’t you set it up, Nicky. Write up a proposal, send it over to Pepper.” He took another bite of the apple and wandered away.

“Did he just call you ‘Nicky’ again?” asked Bucky, without looking up from the tablet.

Darcy looked at Hameed and said, “What just happened?”

Hameed shrugged and said, “Tony just happened. If you have any interest in this at all, I’d say you should run with it. It’s a very rewarding field. And I’m not talking about money, but… from what I just witnessed, doesn’t sound like money’s going to be a problem for you…”

<<>>

“I wonder how long Stark will let us live here,” said Darcy. “Like a couple of bums, doing nothing but sleep, eat, wreck our sheets…”

It was morning, and they were lying on the bed, both of them bare and warm, Bucky down by her tummy, making lazy circles with his finger on the skin just above her hairline. Some time in the night she’d woken up, in pain— ever since the panic attack, her drug-and-pain cycle had been thrown off— and she’d taken another pill, the supply now starting to run low. She’d woken again, just before dawn, loose and warm and wanting his touch…

He’d been down below with his mouth for almost an hour, a deliberately languorous tease of stop-and-start, caressing her and then resting to talk, tasting and pulling on her body until she was trembling, but never quite cresting… he was taking a break now, his head lying against her hip.

“Dunno,” he said. “If you start workin’ for Jane, you’re not doin’ nothin’. Or you could try that other thing, like the doc suggested last night. The prosthetics program.”

“It kind of came out of nowhere,” she said.

“Don’t mean it’s the wrong thing,” he said. “I can tell you’re interested.”

“I wonder if Mr. Stark was serious about funding it… letting me set up an actual department.”

“Seemed like it,” he said.

“But that’s banana-balls,” she said. “I mean, who does that?”

“Apparently, Tony Stark does,” he said.

She was quiet a minute, and then she said, “Hey,” softly, running her fingers through his hair.

“Hmm?”

“Come up here.”

“In a minute,” he said, and he slid his head back down, returning his mouth to the softness of her warm center. He was rolling her flesh and her flavors slowly over his tongue like she was something rare that he needed to treasure, and she arched and gasped, and he almost got her that time… but he was evil in a way she fully supported, drawing it out, and he pulled back and said, “I like it down here…”

She tensed the muscles of her thighs, needing to squeeze them together, and rolled her hips again. “I can tell,” she said, breathless. “And I fully support your interests, but right now I need you up here…”

He looked up at her, his eyes sleepy with pleasure, smiling, and it warmed her even more, seeing the happiness written on his face… “C’mere,” she said again, and he pushed up a little with his arm and then moved up until he was sliding against her, half-hard…

“Soon,” she said, smiling, and she curled her finger, telling him to come closer… “I need to tell you something…”

And when he got up close to her, she rolled them onto their sides and put her hands on his face, stared into his beautiful blue-grey eyes, her thumbs smoothing over his eyebrows, down his cheekbones and ending on either side of his jaw, holding him there…

“You got a secret?” he asked, but he was teasing, unworried.

“No,” she said. “You already know this. Just wanna make sure you hear it, for real, no distractions…”

And it was a little scary like this, face-to-face, nothing in the way, no movements or sounds or waves of pleasure to duck behind, but it was like she’d said, the first time they made love: it wasn’t enough, the words not big enough to say how she felt… but maybe this was how you made it bigger— no hiding, no covering it over with jokes or gestures or scenery… just this, their eyes, their mouths, their hearts…

So she said it like that, just holding his face in her hands, inches away, nowhere to hide…

“I love you.”

And she could see it in his face— that same instinct, afraid to receive it fully like that, so bare, but she held him there with her eyes, her thumbs stroking his cheeks… said it again… “I love you, Bucky.”

And he stayed there with her, hanging onto her eyes, and she could tell when he grabbed onto it finally, risking it, his face changing, like all of his cells expanded a little, rearranging themselves, and his breathing picked up, and then he did duck away, not physically, but somewhere in his eyes, almost frightened…

“Hey, hey…” she said, still holding his face, hating that the words had made him feel anything but wonderful… “I don’t want you to feel like… you don’t have to…”

“I want to,” he said, his eyes moving back and forth between hers. He said it again, so quietly: “I want to…”

And she could tell that he wanted to pull her face to him, his eyes darting to her mouth, the gesture so familiar by now, but he couldn’t do it, his only arm trapped, pressed under his side, keeping him balanced on the bed, so she moved in for him, holding his jaw with her hands as she took his lips and kissed him with everything she could put into it…

And then he rolled them, pushing up on his arm so that he had some control, and bent down to take up the kiss again himself, and moved his body against her, below, asking, and she reached down to help him in, and then he showed her… with his body, moving inside her, and his mouth, and the vulnerable sounds that left his lips, what he hadn’t yet said with his words, but she could feel it through every roll of his hips, pouring through his skin into hers, and she grabbed on, wanting to believe, sensing for the first time in a very long time that somewhere, in her future, the sun was coming up…


	29. Chapter 29

“You sure you know what you’re doing?” asked Jane.

Darcy was pulling takeout containers from several large plastic bags and arranging them on the break-room table, checking the labels to see what was what. Stark had assigned an actual runner to them, a college-aged girl who’d been thoroughly vetted— probably further than any runner in the history of the American workforce— and now all Darcy had to do was text their food and supply orders to Tiana, and bags of stuff magically appeared, leaving Darcy mostly free to do the more skilled work for Jane on the laptop.

She’d been spending a couple of hours a day in the workshop with her, while Bucky worked on his words with Sam. It’d been more than a few days now, and she hadn’t had any more panic attacks, so she was hoping the trigger had been purely environmental— she could just avoid being in the safe room from now on, and all would be hunky-dory. A little voice in her head was telling her that was unlikely, but she was telling that voice to shut up and leave her alone.

“Do I know what I’m doing,” Darcy said, repeating Jane’s question. “Gee, thanks for the super-judgy tone— said no-one _ever_ ,” and then, after a moment, “It would help if I knew what you were even talking about. Do you mean the prosthetics program?”

Darcy had run the idea by Jane, wanting her advice, trying to figure out if she should take Stark’s offer seriously. Jane, like everyone else she’d asked, felt that Stark had been completely serious, but hadn’t yet weighed in on whether she thought it was a good idea. In the meantime, Darcy was starting to realize that even if Stark had just been blowing smoke up her ass, she couldn’t deny the excitement she felt as she considered it— not so much the departmental head thing, which seemed nuts: how was she in any way qualified for that?— but the field in general…

The idea of the prosthetics program had ballooned in her over the past few days, like bread-dough rising in a warm room, getting bigger and bigger until it was spilling over the edges, undeniable: she wanted to do it, with or without Stark’s financial backing.

Hameed had been back to consult with Bucky again, making plans for an arm to get started on— a basic hybrid limb with a multi-articulating myoelectric hand— and she’d bombarded him with questions, which he’d cheerfully answered. He’d even smoothed the way for her to bypass the normal admissions process, so that she could audit the courses under a false name— another perk of being affiliated with Stark Industries— so that she could get going for the fall program, which would begin in just a couple of weeks.

“Not the _program_ ,” Jane was saying, dropping her voice, even though they were alone in the room. “I was talking about _him_.”

“Him?” asked Darcy, being purposely obtuse, as she pretended to examine a receipt.

“You know,” said Jane, annoyed. “Barnes.”

It’d become pretty obvious to Jane over the past few days, by the way that Darcy and Bucky behaved around each other when he came by the workshop, that they were indeed doing some form of the nasty. Unlike how she’d been at their Thai-food lunch, Darcy was now having a juvenile response to Jane’s discomfort, as though she were trying to push the buttons of a disapproving parent, being extra touchy-feely, and free with the PDAs.

“Would it kill you to use his first name?” said Darcy, as she pushed a container of mac-and-cheese over to Jane. “Here, this one’s yours. And yes, I know what I’m doing. I’ve got all eight of my bug-eyes open.”

“You mean, ‘James’?” said Jane, being just as stubborn, and then she said, “Spiders,” leaning over to smell the mac-and-cheese, before cautiously tasting it. “This is going to give me instant diarrhea, isn’t it.”

Darcy finally sat down and opened her own container, revealing a triple-decker club sandwich, and an obscene amount of creamy potato salad on the side. “I have no idea what you just said… spiders and diarrhea?”

“Spiders have eight eyes, not bugs,” said Jane, and then slowly chewed one single elbow of the macaroni.

“I’m gonna miss your Aspie bullshit when I leave,” said Darcy, sincerely meaning it. “You know you’re gonna have to break in a new assistant. She’ll spend the first six weeks thinking you’re an enormous asshole every time you correct her on technicalities…”

Jane sighed and stirred her mac and cheese, not really eating it. “So you’re really gonna do it? The program?”

“Yeah,” said Darcy, saying it definitively, out loud, for the first time. “I am.”

Jane looked glum. “I want to be happy for you, but I’m too selfish. I’m gonna miss you. You’re the best assistant I’ve ever had.”

“I’m the _only_ assistant you’ve ever had,” said Darcy, “not counting the robots, which I don’t. And anyway, if Stark’s for real, maybe I’ll be working here.”

“You know what I mean,” said Jane.

“Yeah,” said Darcy, smiling. “I love you too, Janey.”

<<>>

“How many of those pills you got left?” asked Bucky. They were side-by-side at the double vanity, brushing their teeth, and she stopped to spit and rinse before she replied.

“Why, you worried about our epic nookie sessions getting cancelled when I run out?”

Bucky laughed and rinsed out his own mouth, tapped his toothbrush off and then looked in the mirror, running his hand over his scruffy jaw. “Well, I am _now_ ,” he said. “Didn’t know cancellation was looming in our future…”

“We’ll make it work,” she said, smirking at him in the mirror as he came up behind her. “So why were you asking, if that’s not what you were thinking about?”

“Steve talked to… Natasha. ‘Bout givin’ you some training. She can start tomorrow, if you’re still interested— nothin’ too physical, ’til you’re up to it.”

He laughed at the sour look she got on her face. “Hey, it’s not gonna be that bad. Might even be fun.”

“Yeah, right. Getting my ass kicked by a super-spy who can kill people with her thighs. I’m so excited.”

“Give it a chance,” he said, moving her hair back so that he could lean over and kiss the side of her neck.

“You trying to convince me with your lips?”

“Will it work?” His hand was sneaking up into her cotton camisole now, and he got a handful of breast as he continued to work his mouth under her jawline.

“Sadly, yes,” she said, her breath hitching as he did something with his thumb that made her tingle down below. “Because I’m just that easy…”

“Wanna make it perfectly clear,” he said, moving his hand down into the front of her pajama pants. “I’d be doin’ all of this even if you’d said, ‘hell, no’ to the training…”

She smiled and squeezed her thighs around him; she could see his hand moving under the fabric, in the mirror, and she wasn’t ashamed to admit it was a turn-on, watching him do it. He was stripped down to boxer briefs, and she could see that it was a turn-on for him too. “I think it’s time for bed,” she said.

“So you gonna do it? The training?”

“Oh my God,” she said, turning around, smacking him playfully against the chest. “You _are_ trying to work me.”

He held up his hand, in a gesture so plain that her brain supplied a sort of phantom arm mirroring it on his left, like he was saying, _whoa there_ , and he was laughing a little, and he said, “Swear to God, doll, I’m not. Just wanna know if I can tell her you’re comin’ or not.”

“What, you thinking about her while you’ve got your hand down my pants?”

“No?” He was confused now, stepped back. “What is this?”

“Nothing,” she said, and pushed past him to head to the bedroom. “Forget it.”

“Don’t do that,” he said, following her.

“What,” she said, testy, pulling the covers back on the bed. They’d found the stash of extra linens, and were now remaking the bed daily. Luckily, the new runner had also taken over all the laundering duties, making daily trips to the cleaners, so they hadn’t had to subject Steve to the horror-show of their debauched sheets.

“Don’t shut me out.” He rubbed his forehead, and muttered, “Jesus, I sound like Sam or something.” He put his hand on her arm, trying to turn her around to face him. “Will you talk to me?”

She knew she was being childish, but… _in for a penny, in for a pound_ … She sighed and turned around to face him. “Fine. Let’s do this, then.”

“Do what? What are we doing?”

“Having this conversation.”

He moved next to her and turned around to sit down on the edge of the bed, looking tired. “Darcy. Sweetheart. What the fuck are we even talking about?”

She sat down too, beside him, picking at the cuticle on her thumb. He reached over and picked up her hand. “Stop that,” he said, blocking her access to the loose piece of skin that she wanted to rip off. His voice was low, tender now, running his fingers over hers. “Sweetheart, just tell me what’s wrong.”

She finally looked up, tried to meet his eyes, but his were still cast downward, looking at their hands, together in her lap. She had the strong instinct that this was a mistake— that she shouldn’t broach this particular topic— but she didn’t want to hide things from him, and she’d be lying if she pretended it hadn’t been bothering her…

“I need to know…” She took a deep breath, and forged on. “What’s your history with Natasha? Do I… is there anything I need to know? That I should be worried about?” And then, because she was feeling particularly puerile, she added, “Or should I call her _Natália_ …” She drew the name out, using one of her dramatic voices… making it sound like something from a Russian fairy tale…

He was still holding her hand, but something in his face had changed, hardened, and a little part of her recoiled inside, said, _uh oh_ , and she knew she’d crossed some line, from what’d maybe been an understandable need for clarity, over to an uglier kind of immaturity, and she didn’t think there was any way to fix it. Damage-control was her best hope at this point.

He pushed up then, dropping her hand, but didn’t say anything, and her stomach soured, thinking he was going to walk away, disgusted… find somewhere else to sleep that night… but instead he went over to the dresser, squatting down as he opened the bottom two drawers on the side where he kept his clothes. He pulled out a pair of sweatpants and a white cotton tank top, and something else from underneath in the lower drawer. He paused for a minute, thinking, and then he pushed the drawers shut and stood up, just looking at whatever it was in his hand for a moment, before turning around to come back toward the bed.

“You want to know all about me… you can read that,” he said, and dropped a heavy file folder on the bed, next to her. “I know you’ve had questions. That… that should cover most of it. Anything you gotta be _worried_ about… you’ll find it in there.”

She was frozen, looking at the file like it was something that might bite her if she moved too fast. He’d dropped the clothes on the bed as well, and now he leaned down to grab the tank top, stuck it over his head, threaded his one hand through the armhole on that side, and then pulled it down over his abs.

“To answer your question,” he continued, and he wasn’t looking at her— his gaze aimed at the wall on the other side of the room— “What I remember about Natália…” He said the name deliberately, pronounced correctly, with the dignity it deserved— not the derision she’d laid upon it…

“She was just a kid. Maybe nine, ten years old. They’d thaw me out sometimes, to spar with them. The little girls. So they could fight someone big, someone stronger than a regular guy. She was good— better than the others. Focused. Ready to learn. That’s all I remember. Up until I saw her here at the Tower, all grown up… when Steve brought me in. Took me a while to figure out who she was… that those memories were even real…”

He kept talking, still not looking at her. “I’ve been told we’ve tried to kill each other a few times, in the interim, includin’ when she was fightin’ me with Steve and Sam, but I don’t remember that too well, ‘cause they were wipin’ me too much by that point. You wanna know anything else, you’ll have to ask her.”

He was pulling on the sweatpants, and he said, “I’m gonna go down to the gym for while. Let you do your reading in peace.” He slipped his phone into his pocket and then walked away, pulling the door shut on his way out. She was alone, sitting on the edge of the bed, the room too silent.

The file sat there, waiting.

<<>>

It was the worst thing she’d ever read. By a lot. That was saying something, considering some of the things she’d seen in some of the skeevier corners of the internet, but part of that was because it wasn’t abstract— something she could be shocked by and then try to forget about— it was about the person she loved. It was personal.

Most of the file was in Russian or German— although someone had provided translations, probably for Steve— and went back to faded typewritten pages from when Bucky’d been taken by the Soviets, and then handed over to Hydra, after falling from the train in 1945.

The pages were copies, the originals clearly having been well-worn… scribbled diagonal notes in the margins, the cursive Russian unreadable, looking like alien script… ringed stains of coffee cups… evidence left behind by the many hands and eyes of others before her, going over these reports, studying the specimen who was never referred to by name. He was the ‘subject’— and occasionally, when he was finally put to work, the _Asset_.

There were copies of correspondence, cold details of procedures and experiments, both failed and successful, photographs that made her sick to her stomach— basically, a catalog of torture… she couldn’t linger too long on those pages, skimming through them, her eyes unwilling to rest on the pictures of body parts— parts she recognized, having spent enough time loving them, resting her head upon them— being sliced open, pieces removed, replaced… details of the early versions of the arm… frustrated accounts of the subject’s resistance to compliance, punitive measures taken…

Then came the years of mission reports… cold… brutal… again with photographs, for some of them… details of assassinations that spanned the second half of the twentieth century and beyond, the most recent ones written in English, reflecting his transfer to the American branch of Hydra, hidden deep within the ranks of SHIELD. There the details became spottier, the upgrades to his workings perhaps more closely guarded; references to his American handler, whom she now knew had been Secretary Pierce himself, were never specific. He’d been maintained, used, and stored, all under the nose of an organization that still listed him as MIA on their Wall of Valor…

Finally, a loose jumble of paper at the end was filled with penciled notes that she could only assume were in Bucky’s hand— a mish-mash of memories, theories, individual words and names, lists, questions, feelings…

It was too much… she felt like she was holding the man’s heart in her hands, all the bleeding, suffering slices of it, stripped away and beating with the raw ugliness of what he’d somehow lived through, and she felt very, very small, and unbelievably petty for her behavior, and she got up to put the file back, tucking it under the pile of clothes in the bottom drawer where it belonged, and then for a while she just lay on the bed and wept.

When she was as cried out as she could get, she rolled over and looked at her phone, checked the time: it’d been several hours since he’d left her there in the room. There weren’t any messages waiting for her, and she had the distinct feeling that the ball was in her court. She clicked on his name, thumbs poised to type out some kind of heartfelt apology, and then abruptly backed out and navigated to Steve’s name instead. It was well after midnight, but hopefully he was up or would at least reply without too much of a fuss.

_Can you plz tell me, what floor is gym? Thx._

She waited a minute, and was considering going down to the workshop, where Mr. Stark was undoubtedly still tinkering, to ask him for directions, when she saw the little animated response bubble come up, indicating that someone was typing on the other end.

_Fitness center on 78. You okay? You need anything?_

She sighed in relief, and thumbed out, _I’m fine, thx. TTYL_. 

She was in the elevator, going down, before she realized she was still in her pajamas— loose drawstring pants scattered with origami birds flying on a pink background, and the plain cotton camisole that did little to hide the contours of her shape up top. She could feel that her eyes were almost swollen shut from crying, and that she probably looked like a piece of warmed-up shit, but she hardly cared, just focused on getting to Bucky. Still, a small part of her hoped that nobody else was feeling inclined to work out at fuck o’clock in the morning.

She’d been half-expecting him to be shredding punching bags by the dozen, or at least starting a fire with some kind of epic treadmill action, so it took her completely by surprise when she opened the door to the gym and saw him just sitting there on the mats, talking quietly to Sam, in the low light supplied by a minimum number of switches having been flicked on. The rest of the enormous room was empty, the silent rows of exercise equipment their only audience.

When they heard her come in, Sam squeezed Bucky’s shoulder and pushed himself up, and was making his way over to her, but she only had eyes for Bucky, who looked like he could be meditating, if the dejected forward slump of his body hadn’t suggested otherwise. His legs were stretched out, his head bowed, chest visibly rising and falling in the white tank top.

For one horrible moment, she felt like she didn’t know him at all— that he belonged not to her, but to that file… to the people who’d taken him apart, rearranged all the pieces, leaving some out… never expecting him to find his own humanity again…

“You all right?” said Sam, and it took her a moment, and then she broke her fixed stare on Bucky to look up at the man in front of her.

“What?”

“Go talk to him,” said Sam. And then he did the shoulder thing to her, too, and left the room without any further advice.

She’d been picking at her thumb again in the elevator, and it was bleeding now, and she stuck it in her mouth, sucking on it, tasting the iron, but it just kept oozing out, insistent, and she finally pressed it into her pants, trying to twist some of the pink fabric around it, to stanch the flow.

She’d been standing there too long, still a dozen steps away from where he was sitting, both of them silent. She forced her legs to start moving, and gradually she closed the distance and sat down next to him, folding up her legs criss-cross style. He kept his eyes shut, breathing through his nose, his jaw clenching and unclenching, nervous.

Her voice sounded young and foolish, and full of self-indulgence when she finally spoke: “I’m a stupid asshole.”

“Don’t,” he said, a warning in his voice, and she tensed inside at the anger she could hear. “That’s too easy,” he continued. He took another deep breath, in and out through his nose, and when he spoke again, it was more careful— trying to be kind. “Say what you really mean.”

“I don’t know what to say,” she said, very softly, and a tear slipped out, and that felt self-indulgent too, and she hoped he wouldn’t see it.

He didn’t respond, and she waited, not knowing what to do, how to navigate this. She didn’t know what he wanted from her— only what she wanted to give… but she was afraid to say it, afraid he didn’t want it, not right now. The silence stretched on, too long… taking on unintended meaning, as though she had nothing to say, or that the line between them had been broken, and it was going to make her cry again… because it was all wrong, but she didn’t know how to make it right.

He glanced at her, and something in him softened, seeing the pain in her face, and then looked down as he offered up a place to start: “Sam says we gotta go easy on each other. Says we’re gonna get fooled. Bein’ in this castle, feelin’ safe…” He sighed. “Bein’… together.”

She was holding her breath, fearful of what he was going to say, but grateful that he was talking, so that she wouldn’t have to— afraid she would say all the wrong things again. She had her mangled thumb tucked under the curved fingers of a fist, held firm in her lap, resolved not to pick at it anymore.

“What happened the other day,” he said slowly. “When you got scared. Or what— when I wrecked the mirror at the motel. Or fallin’ apart in the bathroom. That’s what’s really goin’ on. He said we can’t hide from it, pretend it ain’t there. If we do, we’re gonna hurt each other.”

“And what do you think,” she said. She checked on her thumb; it’d finally stopped bleeding, and she tried to relax her hands, but found it impossible not to fidget, rubbing at the spot she’d ravaged near the bed of the thumbnail.

“I think Sam’s too smart for his own good,” said Bucky, and he looked down to see what she was fussing at, and he reached over, picked up her hand. “What’d you do,” he said, frowning at the ripped edge, stained with dried blood.

“Destroyed my cuticle,” she said. She took in a shuddering breath, feeling raw at the easy way he held her hand, like maybe everything hadn’t gone to shit. “Like I said: I’m a stupid asshole.”

He waited a moment, and then he said, “Did you read the file?” His voice was low, and he kept his eyes lowered, focused on her fingers.

“Yeah,” she said.

“And?”

She sighed. He was still holding her hand, and she could smell the faint sheen of sweat on his skin, feel the warmth of his body, so close, and she just wanted to crawl into his lap, press into him, put her hands on him— showing him what she thought would be easier than trying to verbalize it… but she felt like her permission to touch him so casually had been temporarily revoked.

“And…” She tried to think how to say it, to be real, like he’d asked her to. “And I’m ashamed for what I said, and how I said it… and I’m just really, really fucking upset about what happened to you. And… I don’t know what else to say… about any of it. Except that I’m sorry.”

He was looking at her finally, and she could see that his eyes were red too, and whatever he’d expected her to say, that obviously wasn’t it. “You’re not…”

“What,” she said. Her heart was pounding.

“Scared? Disgusted?”

“Hell yeah, I’m disgusted,” she said, her voice finally rising a bit. “By what they did to you.” She wrinkled her brow, looking at him. “Did you think that I would… that I was going to…” And then she veered to another thought: “Why show that to me now? Why’d you pick that moment?”

He blew out a breath, almost a chuckle, a wry smile on his lips for a moment before his face went slack again, and he looked down as he answered. “Because I was pissed off. Felt like you were sayin’ I wasn’t… true. Like everything I’ve said, done… like it didn’t mean shit if you thought I would just… Christ, Darcy, even if I’d had somethin’ with her in the past, do you really think that’s who I am? That I’d see her and just leave you by the side of the road…”

“So then why—”

“Guess I thought if that’s how you felt about me, lookin’ for reasons to doubt me… you might as well get the whole picture, make it complete. But with real facts— not this bullshit you’re cookin’ up in your head. See the man you’re makin’ time with… what they done to me, the things I’ve done… what I’m capable of.”

“Where’d it even come from? How did—”

“Natália…” He sighed, and corrected himself. “ _Natasha_. Steve said she used her contacts to dig it up, put it together… Once he knew I was alive, I guess he couldn’t let it go. She thought… maybe he should know what to expect if he ever found me…” He paused, and then said, “Or maybe she meant to convince him not to go lookin’.”

She had no idea what to say to that— all she had left was more emotion, because it hurt— her face crumpling but silent, her chest quaking with it, trying to hold it in but failing… and then he was pulling her into his lap, holding her, shushing her, and she curled her hand around the strap of his tank top, squeezing it, feeling like she needed to clench something, claw at it, fight— not him, but something else, whatever malevolent force wanted to hurt them, fuck this up for them, and she said, “I hate this— I hate this… I hate hurting you. I hate feeling like this. Why are we doing this?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered, and he held the back of her head as she sank into his body. “Maybe it’s like Sam said— we’re both… stressed out… but pretendin’ we’re not…”

“I didn’t feel like I was pretending,” she said, and sniffled. “That happiness… it was real. _Is_ real.” She’d unfolded her legs so that she was straddling him, legs bent, feet on the ground, and she felt like this was right where she was supposed to be, coupled right into him.

“Goddammit,” she said, fiercely. “I’m not pretending— not about us. I’m not saying Sam’s wrong… about the stress… but it’s both.” She held his eyes, just inches away, and spoke with conviction, knowing it was true: “I’m not pretending with you.”

He moved his hand to her jaw, held her steady as he kissed her, once, deliberate, slow, and then pulled back, pressing his forehead to her, and he exhaled and said, “I love you, doll,” his eyes closed, as his chest rose and fell. “Don’t know why you don’t believe it. Don’t trust it. Guess I’m not doin’ a good job, showin’ you… tellin’ you.”

“You are,” she said, her breath heavy with emotion… “You are…” And she was whispering now, “I’m just… I already told you… I’m a fucking idiot. What can I say…”

And then he laughed, almost silently, mostly a feeling, and she did too, infected by him, and he was kissing her again, with a hunger this time, and she gave herself up to it, needing him, kissing him back, and he said, “I’m sorry… I’m sorry,” in between, even though he wasn’t the one who’d started the argument, if that’s what it’d been… but she knew he was sorry anyway— just like her, hating that they were spending any time hurting each other…

He stopped it then, pulling back, licking his lips, and he said, his eyes down, “Sam also said that we, uh… we shouldn’t use sex to avoid… doin’ the work… havin’ the feelings.”

“Are we doing that?” she asked. She combed her fingers through his hair, curled them against his scalp. “We’re not doing that, right? I don’t think we are… are we?”

“Shit, I don’t know,” he said. “I know I’m not about to say _hey, hold up_ when somethin’ feels right… not anymore…” He chuckled. “I told Sam… I said, you gotta be crazy, tellin’ a guy like me… what I been through… say no to bein’ with my girl… pull back and have some kinda level-headed discussion, when I could be holdin' her instead, or lyin' in her arms…”

She still had her hands in his hair, and now she was kissing along his hairline, above his eyebrows, and then down to his temple, the top of his cheek, his mouth… she couldn’t stop touching him… “And what’d Sam say to that,” she said, barely above a whisper.

“He laughed… did that shoulder thing he does… an’ he said… well, it don’t gotta be an ‘either-or’… just to… what’d he say… to be _mindful_ … think about what we’re doin’, and why.”

He pushed out a breath and said, “I gave up on thinkin’ I could ever feel… feel like this, about anything… thought they killed all that, and I mean— I was okay with that… thought I could still do some good, maybe do somethin’ with Steve, but… now that I know…”

He was holding her hand again, tracing her fingers. “I ain’t about to push it away, now that I know..." He trailed off again, and then he looked right at her as he finally finished his thought, his voice almost a whisper as he moved his eyes across her face. "That it turns out... I ain’t really dead after all…”

She knew he wasn’t just talking about sex now, and she whispered his name… “ _Bucky_ …” and they shared another slow kiss, dragging on until she had to break away to breathe.

She pulled away a little, her hands on his chest now, and she said, tentatively, “Can I just ask you one thing? About Natasha?” When she felt him tense up ever so slightly, she quickly said, “It’s not— I trust you. I do. It’s just— I want to know what she said to you, right before we came in. When we were at Coney Island. You asked her a question. She said, ‘yes,” to you about something, right?” She chuckled a little, trying to lighten it. “That’s, like, the extent of my Russian language knowledge…”

He sighed, pulling at a lock of her hair, his head slightly bowed, took a moment before he answered her. “I asked her if she would have killed me, to stop me… when they were tryin’ to take me. Back at Stark’s place.”

“That’s what she said ‘yes’ to?”

“Yeah.” His voice was soft, and he looked up then, met her eyes, being clear with what he said next. “And then I asked her if she’d do it again. Put me down, to keep me safe, or to keep me from— to keep everyone else safe. If it came to it. She gave me her word.”

They were silent for a moment, just looking at each other, and then she whispered, “Okay,” and he let out a long breath as she brought her hands back to his face.

She kissed his mouth again, slowly, and when she was done he pulled his lips in, tasting them, his eyes closed, and she smoothed her thumbs across the bones of his cheeks and said, “Are you done working out?”

“Didn’t really come down here to exercise,” he said.

“I know,” she said, quietly, and she feathered her fingers across his lips and then asked him, almost shyly, “So… what Sam said… I mean, we’ve had our argument, and our talk… so can we go back to our room now and touch each other? You know, _mindfully_? I mean… If you want to…”

“I’m game if you are,” he said, his voice low, making her tingle with the promise behind it, and she kissed him again, deeper this time, and his arm came around, sliding up her back and into her hair to hold her to him…

And later, as she watched him sleeping— such a rarity, their positions reversed: Bucky always the one losing sleep, guarding over her— she felt a wave of protectiveness so intense that it hurt as it washed over her, and she knew that she had to defend this, this thing they were building, even against her own stupidity… and so she cut the last thread of resistance, the self-defense of a secret restraint— not about her feelings for him, but what she risked if she trusted his— and she tore down that last wall, went truly all-in— stepped off the edge and chose to believe.

<<>>

“What word are you on,” she said. It was after ten in the morning and they were still in bed, both of them exhausted from the emotional night. Bucky had finally gotten up to make coffee, and he’d brought two steaming mugs back to the bed, walking carefully as he grasped both of the handles together with his one hand, trying to keep the hot liquid from sloshing over as it swayed. She could tell that he liked being capable in these small ways as he figured out his balance, and she was happy to let him, not making a big deal out of it…

Now they were lying side-by-side, propped up by pillows, Darcy in her reading glasses, messing around on her phone, working on her playlists, while Bucky tapped on a tablet Sam had given him to do his homework: words that had caused a slight rise in his vitals, indicating some level of stress. He was to use them in a variety of contexts, add them to his working vocabulary if possible, to desensitize himself.

Some of them were English translations of the Russian words used by Wells— Sam said it was likely just his brain making a connection between the two, and not necessarily an indication that the English versions had any real power over him, but Bucky was working on them anyway, just to be sure.

He tapped on the tablet again, and answered her question. “Daybreak.”

“Mmm,” she said, setting her phone down on the covers as she looked up. “That’s a pretty word. We definitely have to reclaim that one.”

“The Russian ones… I mean, the translations of the… the confirmed trigger words… they don’t bother me too much, so far… except for one of them.”

“Which one?” she asked. She pulled off her glasses and looked at him.

He took a breath before he said it. “Homeland. It— it can be translated as ‘motherland’ or ‘fatherland’, but it feels worse when I use the neutral word… like the translation means something.”

“What’s different about it?”

He frowned. “I don’t know. It does something… different. Feels… significant. It’s like… with the others, there’s a… a tension. But with this one, it’s almost like… there’s a compulsion to…”

“To what?”

“It’s hard to describe… like there’s something I’m forgetting. That I need to remember.”

“God, creepy,” she said. “What’s the Russian version? Are you okay to say it? Or is that too…”

“Sam said to hold off on those for now, but of course my brain’s thinkin’ it anyways… can’t help it… I don’t wanna say the words out loud, but the Russian version… it’s actually part of a phrase… means, ‘return to the homeland’.”

“Do you think it might be like an actual command? I mean, that sounds an awful lot like, ‘return to base’.”

“Yeah,” he said. “But if it’s a command— tellin’ me to return to base— why’d that be part of an activation sequence? I mean, you’d think I’d already be at a base, if someone’s wakin’ me up, activating the programming…”

“You weren’t in this case,” she said. “Did you…” She stopped, not wanting to finish the question.

“Did I what.”

“I don’t know if I should ask this. Or if you even remember.”

“It’s okay, doll, go ahead and ask,” he said, setting down the tablet.

“Okay,” she said, taking a breath first. “When you were… after you were triggered. Do you remember if… did you feel like you needed to get somewhere? Or were you just… waiting for orders from Wells. Doing what she said.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t remember it like that. It’s like…” He frowned. “You ever been so drunk you can’t remember everything you did the night before? Just little pieces? Or maybe not ’til someone tells you, and then you might be able to bring part of the memory up… but without confirmation from someone else, you wouldn’t know if it was real or just a dream…”

“My cousin’s wedding,” she said ruefully. When he looked at her she said, “Uh, some _bad choices_ were made. Glad most of it’s a blur.”

“So, it’s sorta like that. When Steve told me I’d choked him…” He closed his eyes. “I don’t remember doin’ it. But it sounds right. Like somewhere inside, my brain holds that memory, and I know it’s true, but I can’t see it. What I’m seein’… it’s not accurate— it’s just Steve’s version of it plastered over, blendin’ in with the real memory, somewhere deep.”

“But you remember other stuff— some of the… the jobs you did, right?”

“Yeah. I think the serum repairs things… brings pieces back… like they’re all there, waitin’, but the connections are broken… it’s all out of order, mixed in with stuff from my childhood, the war… it’s hard to make sense of it sometimes.”

“I saw your notes,” she said. “At the end of the file…”

“Yeah,” he said. “When I was on the street… I’d been out of cryo for a while, finally… not gettin’ wiped no more… that’s when a lot of it started comin’ back. Felt like I was crazy half the time… I started tryin’ to write some of it down. Then when I came in… I was talkin’ to Sam about it, and he got Steve to give me the file, so’s I could try to match it up, see what was real…”

Their phones chimed, almost simultaneously, and Darcy picked hers up and checked the message. “Ms. Potts called a meeting. One hour.”

“Hope it’s good news,” said Bucky. He checked his own phone, confirming that he’d gotten the same message. “Don’t know how it could be, though. Seems like we just keep gettin’ bad news. And I know how bad you’re wantin’ some kind of resolution to it— to see the sun go down for good on that lady who took us…”

“Oh my God, _finally_ ,” she said, slamming her phone down into the covers.

“What is it?” he said, startled.

“You just said, ‘see the sun go down’…”

“Yeah…?” He turned to put his phone and tablet away, and then rolled back, to give her his full attention.

“I’ve been trying to come up with something,” she said. “The nail polish you gave me— the name of the color— it’s _Meet me at Sunset_. So that’s what it can mean— like an omen, but in a good way. You and me together, watching the bad guys go down.”

“You believe in that stuff?” he asked, surprised.

“Fuck, no,” said Darcy, and she put her own phone away, carefully setting her glasses on the bedside table, and then eased over to snuggle into him. “I mean, not really. But I’ve been thinking about the name— trying to think of something happy for it. I do dumb stuff like that sometimes, like I’m superstitious even though I don’t really believe it… like when you were gone, after the haircut… I was like, ‘ _he’s gonna come back at sunset— that’s what it means_ ,’ and then you didn’t, and it seemed kind of sad— like if it was a fairy tale or something, that’d be the condition to make the happily-ever-after come true, but then the sun went down, so…"

She trailed off, realizing how stupid and childish it all sounded when she said it out loud, but he was still listening to her, even prompting her to continue with a, "So?"

"So," she said, "ever since then, I’ve been trying to come up with the Plan B of what it means, so that it doesn’t have to be the first one, the sad one that didn't come true…” She scrunched up her face, embarrassed. “I know it’s super dumb…”

He was looking at her affectionately and he swiped his thumb across her cheek. “S’not dumb to want that… m’just sorry I messed it up. Anyway, if we’re talkin’ in metaphors, I think I’d rather meet you at daybreak,” he said. “At the start of somethin’, instead of the end.”

“Oooh, you used the word,” she said, waggling her eyebrows. Then she said, “We can do both— see that bitch go down, and then ride off into the sunset… but instead of that being the end, the sun comes up the next morning, and we’re still riding— doin’ our thing… kicking ass, at whatever life throws at us…”

He laughed and twirled up a loop of her hair. “Kicking ass?”

“We don’t have to literally, like… attack people,” she said. “I just mean… we live a kick-ass life. Nobody stopping us.” She looked up into his eyes again. “We win.”

“I like the sound of that,” he said softly. “Not just the winnin’, but… doin’ it all with you.” His eyes were moving all over her face, like he was charmed by her, and he released the curl he was playing with, tucked it behind her ear. “So how do we get goin' on that?”

“Well, first we’re gonna take showers… and then we’re gonna go to this meeting. After that…” She grinned. “Let the ass-kicking begin.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before anyone flames me for the phrase "Aspie bullshit" I just want to make it clear that I'm not coming down on Asperger Syndrome. Probably a good third of my extended family is either obviously or sub-clinically on the spectrum (including myself). I thought it'd be fun to suggest that Jane is on the spectrum (it's not a stretch) and I might even write a standalone fic that features her as being on the spectrum (because women on the spectrum are so under-represented in media... practically non-existent... the stereotype being a nerdy guy who's the comic relief with his rigidities and inability to get laid.)


	30. Chapter 30

“So here’s what we know,” said Potts, addressing everyone who’d assembled: Steve and Sam, Bucky and Darcy, Barton and Romanov… Darcy had been unable to meet Romanov’s eyes, feeling residual guilt for the night before, even if the other woman could have no knowledge of her childish and misplaced jealousy. Darcy had told Bucky to let her know that the training was a ‘go’, but she hadn’t gotten any confirmation yet.

“We’ve been looking into those staff deaths I mentioned earlier,” said Potts. “The heart attack— that was a man from IT, so we looked very carefully at it… and it appears to have been real. Nothing suspicious. His physician told us it’d been coming on for years now, that the man hadn’t made the lifestyle changes he’d been prescribed… There was nothing in his apartment, in his personal life to raise any red flags…”

She had a thick stack of papers and she pushed them over to Barton, who was on her right, and he took a packet off the top and moved it down the line to Natasha, who did likewise, the stack making its way around the table. Darcy flipped through the sizable packet, seeing that it was a dossier focusing on three individuals, with extensive notes and supplementary photographs, both from their official company files, and taken from CCTV stills.

“Natasha helped pull all this together in just the last forty-eight hours,” said Potts. “We don’t know everything yet, but we’ve got strong evidence now that these three individuals were involved somehow, even if just peripherally, in the attack at the cabin…”

“Our biggest break came the day before yesterday,” she continued. “The technician from R&D… Reynolds. Page five… the one who’d been ruled a suicide. His wife called us… she found a safe-deposit key in one of his drawers, and it wasn’t for the box they shared. It wasn’t even at the same bank.”

“He was being being bribed,” she said. “One of their children has a congenital heart condition… very expensive medication. Their insurance stopped covering the cost of it a few years ago, when the rules changed.” She sighed. “I had no idea our employees were being treated this way under the company plan…”

She took a sip of her water and then continued. “It made him… vulnerable. His family was suffering. Buried in debt. Someone got to him… they were paying his medical bills, the medication for his daughter… his wife had no idea. Apparently he suspected it could end this way, because he composed a detailed letter, laying it all out, with as much evidence as he could supply, in the event that he suffered a suspicious death…”

“Wouldn’t that be traceable?” asked Steve. “The payments?”

Darcy asked, in the same moment, “Did he name the person? Was it Wells?”

“No,” said Potts, answering both of them. “He never spoke to the person in charge, as far as he knew, and he was paid in cash, so there’s no electronic trail to follow— he had access to a P.O. box on the outside, where he’d leave paperwork, pick up the cash.”

“We haven’t been able to determine who was renting the P.O. box,” she said, when Steve looked at her, the question obvious on his face. “We may have to call in some favors. I know you’re trying to keep the feds as far from this as possible…” Her eyes flicked to Bucky.

“But that’s not all,” she continued. “He had a contact on the inside, too…” She flipped through the dossier, and said, “Page twenty-seven.”

They all shuffled through their papers. “The coffee cart lady?” asked Sam, his tone dubious.

“Yes,” said Potts. “She’s the connection to our other suspicious death— the young man from scheduling, who was killed in a hit-and-run last weekend…”

The dossier had numerous pictures of both the scheduling guy and the R&D guy getting coffee from the kiosk in the lobby. “The pictures go back ninety days,” said Potts. “That’s as long as the system records before it starts to overwrite. But based on the information Reynolds supplied in his letter, this has been going on for years.”

“How do the pictures prove anything?” asked Darcy. “I mean, half the building must have gotten coffee there, right?”

Romanov spoke up now. “They were communicating something. Reynolds explains in the letter. He had the regularly-scheduled exchanges, at the P.O. box, but he had a secondary objective, which required him to report to the contact, by paying for his coffee with cash. At the time he last updated the letter, a couple of months ago, he’d been waiting for almost three years, with nothing to report. According to the CCTV we have, he finally got his chance— twice— and it’s significant: the first time was the day that Barnes arrived at the Tower… and the second and final time was the day he left, to be moved upstate. The day after that was his apparent suicide.”

“How could he have known?” asked Steve. “He had no access, no way of getting that information… we’ve already thoroughly checked and cleared Doctors Kayani and Jones… anyone who would've seen Bucky when he was here before... did he say what he was reporting on?”

“It’s all in there,” said Potts, indicating the file. “But yes— when Mr. Reynolds was first approached, he was told that he would be asked to share tech— research, schematics— on a limited, but regular basis… he’d been at it for three years, receiving payments, passing information once every few months…”

Steve was flipping through the pages, trying to find the information himself.

“We don’t think the tech was ever the objective,” said Potts. “None of what he was working on was anything very remarkable or, frankly, unavailable to other researchers at other companies, in some form. We think that was just a distraction, perhaps meant to appeal to his ego… keep him focused on the paperwork and the cash flow… instead of digging into his real purpose, which was this.”

She held up a rectangular box, about the size of a smartphone, maybe a little smaller. She pressed a button on the side, and some blinking lights came on the edge of it, cycling through some kind of protocol, like a network router going through its startup sequence. The lights pulsed amber for several seconds, and then held steady— all but one, which went out, its neighbor coming on instead, flashing green. She set it down on the table and slid it over to Bucky, who picked it up, turned it over in his hand.

“In his letter, Mr. Reynolds told us where to find this in his workspace. He’d been instructed to keep it powered and activated, and to report on a change in the sequence. He didn’t know what it was for— he suspected it was monitoring his own activities in some way, but couldn’t be sure; some of the components were pre-assembled in such a way that he couldn’t determine their function— but he was instructed to never remove it from his office, and not to tamper with it once it was assembled.”

“What does it do?” asked Darcy, looking at it warily as Bucky set it down again.

“Tony has determined that it’s a sophisticated kind of chemical detector,” she said. “Scanning a wide radius for specific substances, and designed to only return a hit on unique compounds. It’s SHIELD-made— or Hydra, via SHIELD; we know that much. Nothing like this is available in the private sector. Tony was… disturbed by its existence.”

“Is it transmitting?” said Steve, concerned.

“No,” said Potts. “Our systems would have detected a rogue transmission from within the building. That’s why whoever they are, they needed a human contact monitoring it, reporting on the activity.”

“Why would they need the R&D guy for that?” asked Darcy. “If they already had the coffee lady on the inside?”

“They had him bring it in, one component at a time, blended in with his regular materials, to get through security. He was told how to assemble it, piece by piece, discreetly, at his workspace. Nobody would have suspected a thing, as long as he kept it hidden, which clearly he did. This all happened three years ago, just a couple of months after the Helicarriers went down.”

“What’s it scanning for?” asked Steve, and they all looked at it, the green light still flashing on its side.

“Me,” said Bucky.

Potts nodded as the rest of them took a moment to digest that, and then he spoke again. “If they’ve got something that can find the metal… the specific alloy they used in my bones…” Bucky sat back in his seat, looking deflated. “Takin’ off the arm won’t change a goddamned thing. I’d have to rip the whole left side of my body out.”

“Clearly it has a limited range, though,” said Steve, and he leaned forward over the table to grab the device. “They had to wait ’til you showed up somewhere that someone had one of these things activated…”

“You think there could be more?” asked Darcy.

“Makes sense,” said Romanov. “Whoever they are, they’d have no way to predict where Barnes would go, other than—”

“Other than assuming he’d come to me eventually,” said Steve, sounding grim.

“We’ve already got people looking in the other facilities you frequent,” said Romanov. “Both here in New York, and in D.C…” She gave him an apologetic look. “We’ll need to check out all of your neighbors,” she said.

“M’Sorry,” said Bucky, murmuring the words. “Shouldn’t have done this… should’ve stayed away…”

“No,” said Steve, anger in his voice. “Least now we know they’re out there, lookin’… and when they show themselves, we’ll be ready to fight.”

“Fuckin’ A,” said Barton, sounding determined.

“What about the other guy?” said Sam. “The scheduling guy?”

“Campbell,” said Romanov. “His pattern was different. Almost no activity until Barnes had already left, and then he made contact almost daily. The database he worked with gave him access to special assignments for staff, appointments, contractors… real-time information about their whereabouts.”

“So he would have known when S.I. contracted with Dr. Wells, and where she was assigned,” said Potts. “We’ve gone over his computer logs from that time period, and he was following activity for all of the on-site and contracted physicians and engineers. They must have assumed one motivation for Mr. Barnes coming in would be to access medical or mental health care, or perhaps for servicing of his… prosthesis.”

“Makes sense,” said Barton. “It’s not like he could just go down to the local urgent care.”

“I ain’t never gonna be free of this, am I,” said Bucky, shaking his head.

Darcy wanted to put her hand on him, comfort him, but it didn't feel right in the context of the meeting. They could talk about it later. “You said he was tracking all the doctors,” she said instead, addressing Potts. “Does that mean Dr. Kayani’s at risk?”

“We’ve already assigned an extra security detail to her,” said Potts.

“I just don’t get it,” said Darcy. “Why would people get involved in something like this? I mean, people who don’t have any political, ideological stake in it? It seems so stupid, so risky…”

Romanov looked at her and blinked. “People will murder complete strangers for less than a thousand dollars. Never underestimate the stupidity, or greed, of human beings.”

“Or in Reynolds’ case, the desperation,” said Sam. “He was tryin’ to save his kid.”

Darcy flipped back to the page that had the employee information for the coffee lady, looked at the picture taken from her work badge. She looked like an ordinary, run-of-the-mill worker: late twenties to early thirties, tired brown hair, over-applied makeup, ugly earrings. She didn’t look like a savvy spy or the member of a secret assault team. “So who is this lady, anyway?”

“We’re working on it,” said Potts. “Obviously the information she supplied at hire was false… but make no mistake— we’ll track her down. Find out what she knows. Who she was working for.”

“You okay, Buck?” asked Steve. Bucky had been silent, staring at the conference table, unblinking. He’d shut down the tracking device and pushed it away.

“Not really, no,” he said.

“You wanna go hit somethin’ for a while?” Steve stood up, looked at Ms. Potts. “We done here?”

“Yes," she said. “Everything we know is in the file; you can look over the rest of it yourselves. Anything that can be done is already being done… Barton’s going to be following up on that P.O. box with the FBI…”

Barton groaned, and Romanov turned her head slightly to him, tiny contractions at the corners of her mouth suggesting what passed for humor on her face…

“And we have multiple resources working to track down the woman in the dossier,” said Potts. “I’ll update you as soon as I have any new information.”

Everyone was standing now, pushing away from their chairs, except for Bucky, who was still just staring at the table. Darcy leaned over and was about to whisper to him, when she heard her name from behind her, on her right.

“Lewis,” said Romanov, in that flat, slightly-scratchy voice. “With me.”

<<>>

“Shouldn’t I change clothes or something?” asked Darcy, as they stepped onto the elevator.

Romanov leaned forward to scan her key-card against the reader inside the elevator car, and pressed a button for one of the sub-levels. She stepped back and looked Darcy up and down, taking in her loose T-shirt, stretch jeans, and worn Chuck Taylors. “You comfortable in that?”

“Well, yeah,” said Darcy, “But not for a workout or whatever…”

“We’re not doing a workout,” said Romanov, staring straight ahead again, as the elevator descended. “I’m going to teach you to shoot.”

“Oh,” said Darcy, and cleared her throat. She felt equal parts relief and anxiety from the pronouncement.

“You’re surprised,” said Romanov. “Is it something that doesn’t interest you?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” said Darcy. “I mean, I’ve definitely missed my taser since moving to New York. It’s not like I even used it that often, but…”

“You liked knowing it was there,” said Romanov.

“Yeah. When I found out they’re illegal here… I guess I feel like I need it here, more than I did in New Mexico.”

“Don’t be too sure about that,” said Romanov. “Here you have people. Crowds are useful.”

The elevator ride was the longest Darcy had spent within arm’s reach of the other woman, and she found it uncomfortable— being so close to her, in such a confined space. She would never forget how quickly she’d moved, back at the Redoubt, appearing and disappearing without a sound, her garrote snapping into place around Bucky’s neck like the crack of a whip— Darcy felt like she’d never been in such tight quarters with such a lethal force. Although… now that she’d seen the naked facts in Bucky’s file, she knew such a sentiment was laughably inaccurate…

She cleared her throat. “I thought you were gonna teach me how to kill a man with my thighs or something.”

Romanov raised her eyebrows. “I’m not going to bother teaching you any physical defense until your body is ready for serious training. A firearm will suit you better for now… and you may find that you like it. Having that… security.”

The elevator came to a stop on B3, and Darcy followed Romanov off the car and down a hallway to a heavy door with a hand-scanner and keypad next to it. They took turns scanning their palms and the door clicked open, giving them access to the shooting range.

“How does it know, anyway?” asked Darcy, as she followed the other woman inside. “Couldn’t I just, like, go in right after you, as long as the door’s still open?”

“You could,” said Romanov. “I wouldn’t recommend it.”

Darcy was waiting for more of an explanation, but didn’t get one.

The range had twelve 25-yard lanes, and Darcy and Romanov had the entire space to themselves. They spent the first forty-five minutes just sitting at a table with a couple of Glocks, Romanov instructing her patiently on the parts of the pistol, how to handle it safely, and just generally getting comfortable with the feel of it, before moving onto loading a pile of magazines with bright orange dummy rounds. Darcy noticed that Romanov had very small hands, just like her.

“Is this even legal?” she asked, after they’d worked for some minutes in silence.

“Sure,” said Romanov. “This part is. The part where I give you a fake ID and a concealed-carry permit next week? Not so much.”

“Next week?” Darcy set the magazine down.

“Sure,” said Romanov again, in the same neutral tone she seemed to use at all times. “You’re going to be starting classes soon, correct? You’ll be leaving the Tower. You should carry. Be ready to defend yourself.”

“In a week?” Darcy made a scoffing sound as she picked up the magazine again, pushed more of the orange cartridges into it. She wanted to ask how Romanov even knew about her education plans, but that was likely a stupid question. The woman probably knew more about her at this point than she did herself.

“You’ll have the fundamentals down within the next day or two,” said Romanov. “After that, it’s just practice. You got anything better to do?”

Darcy had about seven snarky comebacks lining up in her head, most of which were X-rated and involved a super-soldier, but she remained silent. Again, there was no need to even voice her thoughts— the other woman had those tiny, humored pinches at the corner of her mouth that suggested she knew exactly where Darcy’s thoughts had settled…

“What, you can read minds, too?” she said grumpily.

“Don’t need to,” said Romanov. They’d finished loading up all the magazines, and now Romanov stood and carried the pile of them over to one of the lanes that had a little shelf at waist-height. There was a large video camera set up on a tripod in the lane next to them, facing the area where Darcy would be standing.

“What’s that for,” she asked.

“Once you get the hang of it, we’ll do some slow-motion recordings so we can analyze and correct your flaws.”

“Sounds like fun,” she said, dryly.

“It can be,” said Romanov, without a hint of sarcasm. “All right. Let’s do some work.” She handed Darcy one of the magazines, and watched while she inserted it into the well of the grip. “Tap it,” she said. “There you go. Okay, go ahead and grip the slide— pull back and then let it go.”

Darcy was nervous, with the other woman scrutinizing her every move, and she felt like she couldn’t release the slide, just kept gripping it tightly, holding it in the pulled-back position.

“Just let it go,” she said again, and then repeated herself, more forcefully: “Let it go.” Darcy finally released it, and it snapped forward with a _thwack_.

“Don’t I need earmuffs or something?” asked Darcy as she raised the gun, bringing her other hand up to steady her grip, just as Romanov had shown her. She was trying to keep her cool, but her heart was pounding, and she was remembering the sound of the slide racking— the same sound she’d just replicated— when Bucky had chambered the round in the safe room. She didn’t want to have a panic attack in front of the Black Widow.

“Finger off the trigger,” said the other woman, and then, “Lean into it more.” Then she answered Darcy’s question. “You don’t need protection for dummy rounds,” she said. “They don’t actually fire. You’re going to have to rack the slide each time, to eject the cartridge.” She pushed Darcy’s shoulder a bit, forcing her to lean even more into the stance.

“I feel like I’m going to tip forward,” Darcy complained.

“Widen your stance a little. You should be comfortable. In control.”

“I don’t feel like I’m in control,” she said. Her hands were shaking, and she felt like an idiot. 

“You’re doing fine.”

“I’m shaking like I’m having a fucking seizure.”

“Take a breath,” said Romanov. “Everyone shakes the first time.”

“Even you?”

“I don’t remember.”

Darcy straightened up out of the stance and lowered the gun, put it down on the shelf and let out a big breath. “I don’t know if I can do this. Maybe we should just do aerobics or something.”

“We all saw the video,” said Romanov, surprising her, again reading between all the lines. “Saw what he did, what he tried to do. Your tension is understandable.”

Darcy took another measured breath, remembering how Sam had counted in fours— four counts in, four counts out.

“You can let it rule you, or you can add it to your experience— let it make you stronger,” said Romanov.

“How the fuck do I do that,” said Darcy.

“Practice,” said Romanov.

Darcy took another three sets of slow breaths, and then she picked up the gun again. Her hands were sweaty, but the beaver-tail texture on the grip helped her keep a steady, firm grasp on the weapon.

“Finger off the trigger,” Romanov reminded her. “Lean into it. You’re in control. Okay, go ahead and take a breath, let it out, and then squeeze the trigger when you’re ready.”

It took her a few tries to work up to it, breathing in and out, and then she finally did it, the weapon making a simple _click_ as she depressed the trigger fully.

“Good,” said Romanov. “Go ahead and rack the slide. If these were live rounds you could simply fire again, but you’ll have to eject each of these manually. When you get more confident, I’ll load up your magazines for you, slip a couple of dummy rounds in randomly, just to mess with you. Good practice for malfunctions.”

“Sounds fun,” said Darcy, echoing her earlier comment, but with less attitude this time. She took aim again, even though she wasn’t actually going to be shooting anything, and this time she pulled the trigger on the first try.

“Again,” said Romanov each time, until the slide locked up, which indicated that the magazine was empty. “Go ahead and release the magazine,” she said, and then handed her a fresh one from the pile. Darcy shoved the new mag in, tapping it home with the heel of her hand, remembered to rack the slide to chamber the first round, and then started to dry-fire her way through the second magazine. And like that, they made their way through all of the ammo, until they had a stack of empty magazines, and the floor was littered with bright orange cartridges.

“My hand is tired,” said Darcy, putting down the gun and rotating her wrist.

“You have a lot of unnecessary tension right now,” said Romanov. “It’ll get better. You should stop for today. You’re going to be sore.”

“No real bullets?”

“Not today. I just wanted you to get used to the feel of the weapon, the sound of the trigger. Your head’s going to keep working on it.”

She hadn’t understood what Romanov had meant by that until later, when she was twirling her fork around a big blob of spaghetti, lost in thought, and Bucky had to ask her three times if she was all right before she snapped out of it and looked up. “What?”

“You okay?” he said. “You were lost somewhere… far away.”

She realized that she’d been thinking about the gun, the way it’d felt in her hands— the weight of it, the certainty of its power. The sound of the slide as it snapped back into place each time she released it, the resistance of the trigger as she squeezed it, and finally the _click_ as she overpowered that resistance each time.

“I think shooting’s gonna be good for me,” she said.

<<>>

In spite of that optimistic attitude, she was in a decidedly worse humor the next day, when she met Romanov down on B3. The other woman picked up on it immediately as they sat at the table again, loading up the magazines— this time with live rounds.

“Something happen I should know about?” she asked mildly, watching Darcy grit her teeth as she pushed the brass cartridges into place.

“Had an appointment with Kayani this morning,” said Darcy. “She’s ramping me down to Tylenol-3. I got so used to the strong stuff, that I forgot how much these fractured ribs suck my ass.” She slammed down the filled magazine and then shut her eyes, taking a slow, deep breath, feeling around the edges of her pain.

“You’ll shoot better without it, even with the pain,” said Romanov. “If I’d known you were changing medications, I would have had you fire some live rounds yesterday, so you could compare.”

Once they’d loaded all the magazines, they carried them over to the same lane they’d worked in the day before, only this time Romanov had earmuffs and eye protection for both of them. It was harder to hear once she’d put on the olive-and-black clamshells, but she already knew what she was supposed to do, inserting a fresh magazine into the well of the grip, and then racking the slide, as Romanov pressed a button on the side of the stall to bring the paper target up to the relatively close, 3-yard distance that she wanted.

Shooting with the live ammo was a completely different experience— even with the earmuffs on, the loud crack of the bullet when she squeezed the trigger was a shock, and she flinched away from it, pulling the barrel of the gun up and squinting instinctively even though she had her eye protection on.

“Keep your muzzle downrange,” said Romanov, pitching her voice a bit higher to be heard. “Finger on the frame. Try again. Line up your sights. Slow, steady squeeze.”

The second shot was just as surprising, especially when the ejected cartridge flew back and hit her right in the lens of her safety glasses. She actually staggered back a few feet, mistakenly thinking for a split second that she’d shot herself. “Muzzle downrange,” Romanov reminded her again, and Darcy realized she had no control over where the gun was pointing. She was glad nobody else was there to see her incompetence.

“If I accidentally fired this off— like, not downrange… into the wall over there or something, how far would it go?” she asked, curious.

“A nine-millimeter round will punch through more than you’d think,” said Romanov. “Certainly through a couple of people, if it’s not stopped by bone. Multiple layers of drywall… most doors…” Darcy was aiming downrange again, and Romanov pushed her shoulder a little, reminding her to lean into it more.

“Down here, the walls are solid, or built to take a bullet, so there’s no danger, unless you really mess up and accidentally shoot someone. Which is easier than you think, if you don’t keep your muzzle downrange, and your finger off the trigger.” At which point, Darcy realized why Romanov repeated those two commands so frequently: the woman didn’t want to get shot.

To Romanov’s credit, and in spite of her cold scrutiny, she never made Darcy feel like a fool. She was the perfect teacher— patient, steady, focused, encouraging. It was unexpected, and Darcy found herself relaxing, which enabled her to attend more to the points Romanov was constantly drilling: stance, grip, aim… breath control, trigger control… Darcy’s biggest problem was follow-through: she couldn’t seem to keep herself from flinching every time she fired a round.

By the time they were watching the slow-motion videos of her ridiculous flinching and recoil, she didn’t even feel self-conscious about it— she just critically studied the frames with the other woman, noted what she was doing wrong, and listened carefully to Romanov’s advice for correcting the problems.

They loaded up another pile of magazines, and worked at it again, and this time Darcy put all of her focus into it, trying to do her best, and even felt a little pride as she sensed herself improving in the areas they’d targeted as most problematic.

“You did good today,” Romanov said, as they cleaned up the range. “Tomorrow we’ll do more target practice, but we’ll also start working on your draw.”

“Cool,” said Darcy, wrapping her arm around her chest as she took a deep breath in and then let it out. She’d barely noticed her pain while they’d been working— if anything, it was forcing her to have better form and control— but without a distraction, it was nagging at her again. “So what’s my fake name gonna be?”

“Haven’t decided yet,” said Romanov. “You and Barnes wanna match?”

“Um…” Darcy wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Was she asking if they were planning to pose as a married couple? The idea bothered her. When and if they ever shared a name— and that was something Darcy wasn’t sure she wanted, even if she ever got married… to anybody… she wanted it to be real. But maybe that was just stupid… something for fairy-tales— not the cold reality of the life she’d slipped into… a world of super-soldiers and spies and people trying to kill her…

“I guess not?” she finally said. “Has he, um… has he picked out a name yet?”

“Nope.” Romanov had finished locking away the guns, and dusted off her hands. “Haven’t discussed it. But if you have any requests, you’d better let me know in the next couple of days. You might consider matching up, though— it’ll draw less suspicion if you’re going to travel together.” Then the woman did that little micro-smile. “Just make it better than ‘Daisy Barton’.”

Darcy was almost speechless. “But— how—” She finally settled on, “What?”

“You need to be more careful,” said Romanov. “You weren’t that hard to find, if you know what to look for, and have access to certain networks.”

“But if you knew…” Darcy was still trying to process it. “You knew we were okay, and you didn’t say anything to Steve? Or Jane?” She thought about it, the timeline… “I mean, I guess it would have only been one day, but—”

“Wasn’t my place,” said the other woman, as she flicked off the lights to the range, and they exited the room. Darcy followed her down the hall to the elevator, where Romanov scanned her palm and called the car. “For all I knew, the two of you wanted to stay gone.”

“But why— I don’t understand—”

“I owe him,” said Romanov, and she actually turned her head to look at Darcy, meeting her eyes, and there was a barrier there, in the woman’s gaze, that made her completely unreadable. “He probably doesn’t remember, but… he had some influence. At a key point. Maybe not intentionally, but it assured me certain… exemptions. Things could have been… quite different for me…”

She wasn’t any more specific than that, but it was clear that by ‘different’, she meant _bad_. Considering what little Darcy knew of the Black Widow’s history— indoctrination at a young age into an intense and violent brainwashing and training program— she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what would be considered ‘bad’ in comparison.

The car arrived, the doors opening, and they stepped on, Romanov swiping her card and punching two different floor buttons. Darcy thought that was the end of the conversation, both of them standing silently in the car, side-by-side, as it ascended back to the VIP floors at the top of the Tower. Just before they reached her floor, Romanov spoke again, eyes straight ahead.

“Whenever he decides what he wants to do… where he needs to go. I can help make that happen.” And then the doors opened, and she stepped off, and was gone before Darcy could think of any reply.


	31. Chapter 31

“What are you doing?” Bucky asked, as he came into the bath studio, tugging at his sweaty T-shirt. Darcy was standing in front of the double-vanity, aiming a pistol at her reflection in the mirror.

Target practice that day had focused on learning a variety of draws: from her right, or strong side; from the front, in what Romanov had said was called an ‘appendix carry’, and then drawing with her strong hand but passing it to her left, and then sighting and firing with her weak hand alone, which had proved very difficult. Romanov wanted her to become proficient in all three.

Her reward at the end of the session had a been a simple black belly-band holster with a kydex insert, and Romanov had allowed her to take an unloaded weapon with her, to practice. Darcy was working on her quick-draw, which wasn’t very quick, in front of the mirror.

She holstered the weapon, turned and helped Bucky get his shirt the rest of the way off, and tossed it into the basket they were using as a hamper. “How was your workout?”

“All right,” he said, rubbing his hand against his forehead.

“Just all right?”

“Fell off the treadmill again,” he said, turning to show her the nasty bruise, red and purple, that striped diagonally up the left side of his body.

“Ouch,” she said, grimacing in sympathy. She knew it would be gone in a matter of hours, but it still looked like it hurt like a motherfucker.

“M’still reachin’ out instinctively with my left side when I lose my balance; got so used to favorin’ that arm to break a fall.” He reached down and stuck his finger in the wide elastic strap of the belly band. “What’s this?”

“Gift from Natasha,” she said. “Said it’s what the ladies wear, if we’re not, like, all tactical and shit with a big utility belt. So, you know, we can still run around in spandex without having to leave our sidearm behind.”

“You workin’ on your draw?” he asked.

“Yeah. I suck.”

“Want me to help you practice? I can sneak up on you, help you respond to somethin’ more realistic than your own reflection,” he said, gesturing to the mirror.

“I don’t know,” she said, uneasily. “That sounds… scary.” She looked down and found herself over-explaining: “I mean, I don’t know how much I need to practice this, anyway. It’s not like I’m actually gonna shoot anyone. This is all just to make me feel more… secure. So I don’t freak out when I finally go back outside, into the real world and stuff. Tasha wants me to carry when I start classes next week.”

He reached over to the holster, pulled out the Glock and looked at it, turning it over in his hand. It was likely the first pistol he’d held since the safe room, and she watched him closely as he handled it, but he seemed perfectly relaxed.

“You shouldn’t carry, if you’re not willing to shoot a real person with it,” he said. “Becomes a liability instead of what it’s meant to be.”

“I don’t want to shoot anybody,” she said.

“Then why are you trainin’ on it?”

“I dunno,” she said, feeling a little defensive. “Natasha thought it was a good choice for me. And she didn’t want to do any of the gymnastics shit until my ribs are healed up and I get a little more fit, so…”

“If you’d had a gun in the safe room that day, would you have used it?” he asked. “I mean, if you’d known how to use it, like you do now?”

She thought about it. “Probably not,” she said. “There were too many guys in there— like, multiple guns trained on us. It wouldn’t have made any difference.”

“What if it could’ve? What if it’d only been Wells— and you’d had a chance to get off a shot or two?”

She imagined it— visualized herself in her combat stance, hands wrapped around the grip, lining up Wells in her sights… “Yeah,” she finally said. “I would have tried to stop her.”

“Well, there you go,” he said. “We should practice; work on your response time.” He set the gun down on the vanity. “M’not sayin’ I’m crazy about you takin’ up shootin’ in the first place; just… if you’re gonna do it, you oughta do it right. If it comes to a fight, and you draw your weapon, you’re gonna be a target— you’re gonna have to be prepared to use it. Without hesitating.”

“She’s gonna have our fake IDs ready soon,” she said, changing the subject. The velcro made a loud ripping sound as she unstrapped the belly band; she unwound it from her body, and set it down on the vanity, next to the gun.

She could tell that he wasn’t fooled by the abrupt shift of topic, but he let it go. “She tell you the names?”

“Yup,” she said. “She said you could be Duncan or David. I said it had to be David, because Duncan just makes me think of donuts… which is too bad, because I looked it up, and I guess it means ‘dark-haired warrior’, which is totally you… but no— I’m a dumbass who just thinks of corporate branding like the mindless consumer that I am… So yeah— ‘David’ it is..”

“Doll,” he said, chuckling, his eyes crinkling up, “I have no idea what you just said.”

“Oh, uh… you know… Dunkin’ Donuts? They’ve been around forever…” She looked at his questioning face and said, “Although I guess maybe not, if you’ve never heard of it. Doesn’t matter— the important part of the story is that your new fake name is gonna be David, which has nothing to do with donuts…”

“David…” he said, scrubbing his hand through his hair as he looked in the mirror. “I can live with that.” He looked over at her then, one eyebrow raised and a little smirk on his face— “S’long as you keep callin’ me Bucky when we’re in bed together…”

It was said in a jokey kind of way, but his words affected her, flooding her with warmth… this vision of them together, stretching into an undefined future, his whispered name on her lips as he moved against her in their bed…

“What about yours?” he asked, pulling her back from the reverie.

“Well… I really wanted to be Zoe,” she said. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be called Zoe so bad. But Tasha said it was too weird. Too… memorable. So… I went with Stark’s stupid thing.”

“You mean Nicky?” he said.

“Yup,” she said, leaning against the vanity. “I’m cool with it. It still has an ‘ee’ sound at the end, like my real name, so…” She broke off to yawn, and then said, “I’m not crazy about the full version— Nicole— it doesn’t feel like me at all… but whatever. I guess I’ll get used to it.”

“What about surnames?”

“Faramond,” she said. “For both of us.” She rushed to say, “Tasha said we should match up, if we’re gonna travel together,” so that he wouldn’t think it was her sappy idea to make them a married couple. “It was that, or Newland, but if we’d gone with Newland then I’d have had to ditch Nicky, because _Nicky Newland_ sounds like some PTA mom from the 1950s who’s secretly a pole dancer at night…”

“What was it again?” he asked, laughing at little at her joke.

“Faramond.”

“Huh,” he said, still looking at himself in the mirror. “David Faramond… it sounds… too nice. Like, I’m a nice guy.”

“You _are_ a nice guy,” she said, coming up behind him and wrapping her arms around his midsection. “Stinky, though,” she said, but instead of recoiling, she buried her noise in his sweaty spine and inhaled deeply.

“M’gonna take a shower,” he said, turning around, and laughed a little at the conflicted look on her face, like she couldn’t choose between the simultaneous distaste and raw lust brought on by his pungent scent. “We cookin’ tonight? I think Steve was fishin’ for an invite…”

“We could,” she said. “I think we still have some noodles and sauce in the cupboard. And some of that take-and-bake bread in the freezer. I know we just had spaghetti, but I don’t care, if you don’t. Why don’t you text him; tell him to come over in a bit.”

Once Bucky had drifted off to the shower room, Darcy picked up the Glock again and mimed drawing it, without putting the belly band back on. She thought about what Bucky had said, and racked the slide, and then turned, falling into a strong stance to take aim at an imaginary target in the doorway. She pictured fake-Wells standing there, and she dry-fired the pistol, enjoying the quiet _click_ of the trigger. “ _Pow_ ,” she whispered. “ _You’re dead_.”

<<>>

Darcy was glad they’d heated up both loaves of the take-and-bake, because the men had easily eaten one entire loaf each, in addition to shoveling in several large helpings of spaghetti.

Steve had been a little late, but he’d brought a nice bottle of red wine, and Darcy was savoring a large glass of it, in spite of not really being a wine person— it was just nice to do something so… normal. As normal as she could feel, in between the conversations about guns & ammo, fake IDs, and stealth tactics… although that sort of thing was starting to feel pretty normal too…

“So Tasha’s got you all set with your new identities?” Steve was saying. 

“Pretty much,” said Darcy. “Said we’d have them in time for the start of my classes next week, that my registration was already taken care of and everything.” She grinned. “I feel like I’m in some kind of bad movie-of-the-week where I’m an undercover cop being sent back to school…”

Steve put down his fork and gave her one of his patented _I’m so proud of you_ expressions that made him so effective as a spokesperson, particularly so because he was actually sincere, which came through in his voice when he spoke:

“Can’t tell you how… I don’t want to sound patronizing, but… well, how impressed I am, what you’ve managed to do, in such a short amount of time— gettin’ Tony to fund your education, and maybe a whole new department in S.I.… and somethin’ altruistic to boot…” He shook his head. “Talk about hittin’ the ground running…”

“Aw, thanks,” she said, beaming at him with a toothy smile. “Can’t really take the credit for Mr. Stark being out of his fucking mind, though,” she said, making Steve bust out an amused chuckle.

The more she got to know him, the more she realized she’d initially mistaken his good manners for a kind of innocence or reserve— where in fact he enjoyed her bawdy language and behavior just as much as Bucky did. Steve Rogers had so many more layers than people gave him credit for, and she felt lucky she was allowed to see some of them peel back.

“I’m just gonna go with it,” she said. “And pray he doesn’t come to his senses before I can at least get my prereqs finished. I just hope I don’t get in there and find out I hate it— I’ve got major deficits in my science background that I gotta deal with before I dive into the fun stuff; I gotta take anatomy, chemistry, physics, psychology… I hope my little pea-brain is up to it.”

“Pea-brain, my ass,” said Bucky, and she grinned at him, and then blew a kiss at him with her lips.

“So that means you guys’ll be sticking around for a while,” said Steve.

“Seems like it,” said Bucky. “I mean, unless somethin’ weird happens and we gotta bug out.”

“Even if I find out I fucking hate school— which I seriously doubt is gonna happen— we’re gonna be here long enough to get his new arm,” said Darcy. “Mr. Hameed said it would be at least four more weeks for the fabrication and fittings.”

“Well,” said Steve, sitting back in his chair. “I got no doubt your brain’s up to the task, so if you wind up likin’ the classes, that means you’ll be here, what— another two? Three years?” 

“At least,” said Darcy. “Hameed said two years, which sounded crazy, but he was really just talking about the Master’s program. That didn’t include my prereqs, and then there’s an internship, which is usually a year… So yeah. Probably three, three-and-a-half years.

Steve tilted his head toward Bucky. “Now we just gotta find somethin’ for this knucklehead to do.”

“Oh, I already got that all figured out,” said Darcy, happily taking up the cause of giving Bucky some good-natured shit. “He’s gonna be my personal driver-slash-bodyguard to-and-from school, and while I’m in class he can do all the meal-planning and shopping, and then when I’m busy expanding my brain with knowledge at night, he can devote himself to cooking our fresh, totally-from-scratch dinners.”

Bucky huffed out a laugh, tapping his fingers on the table, and said, “I know you’re just foolin’ around— and my pop would turn over in his grave if he could hear me, lettin’ my girl go out to work while I stay home cookin’— but after everything… that don’t sound all that bad to me.”

“You always did like helpin’ your ma out in the kitchen,” said Steve, and he wasn’t teasing anymore. “I say do what makes you happy, if you can… you deserve it.”

Darcy took another sip of wine, and sent up a prayer to the gods to protect both of these guys, and pretty-please could she keep them forever…

“Don’t know about deserve, but I’ll take what I can get,” said Bucky. And then, “Seriously, though…I still got at least four more languages to do with Sam, and then we gotta find out what other words are lurkin’ in the cracks up here.” He tapped the side of his head with his index finger. “Gonna be busy for a while, yet.”

Steve got that little dent in his forehead. “How’s that going?”

Bucky shifted in his seat. “It’s all right. I think… I don’t wanna jump the gun, but… I think maybe there’s a chance it could be workin’. The words that were raisin’ my levels at first… the more I use ‘em, the less they bother me. I think— I’m pretty sure if someone came at me with anything startin’ with A-to-K in English at this point, I’d be okay to fight against it, even if it made me sweat a little.”

“There was one that was kind of weird,” said Darcy, looking to Bucky to see if it was okay to talk about it. “One of the ones from the activation sequence.”

“Homeland,” said Bucky, when Steve looked at him.

“Like… ‘homeland security’?” asked Steve.

“Maybe,” he said. “M’still tryin’ to work it out. Might not ever know…”

“Maybe it’s not important to know,” said Steve, “S’long as you desensitize yourself to it.”

“Yeah,” said Bucky. “It’s naggin’ at me, though. I’d like to know if there’s somethin’ significant about it.”

“You do any Russian yet?”

“Yeah. Just today— when I told Sam about the tingle I was gettin’ from that one word, we took a break from the English to target the words from the trigger sequence. Even out of order, it’s… uncomfortable. More so than the English. S’probably why I pushed so hard at the gym. Needed to burn off that tension.”

Steve’s phone chimed, and he pulled it out of his pocket, frowning as he checked the message. “Barton’s got news.”

“What is it?” asked Darcy.

“Hang on,” said Steve. “He’s still typing…” The phone chimed again, a minute later, and Steve conveyed the message to them. “He says they tracked down the coffee lady.”

Bucky leaned forward, resting his forearm on the table. “Where.”

“Apartment in Queens. They got a body.”

Darcy sat back heavily. “God. Whoever it is, they’re taking out their own. Or maybe the coffee lady was just another bribe-job, like extra layers between all the levels…”

“Barton says they’re gonna be workin’ the scene all night, him an’ Tasha, before they let the feds in on it. Said to expect a briefing some time tomorrow morning.”

Bucky stood up, started carrying dishes to the sink. “He say how ripe the body was?”

“No,” said Steve. “But we should probably assume we have an active hostile in the area, until we hear otherwise.”

“Shit,” she said. “Maybe we shouldn’t be going out after all, even for school…”

Bucky came back to the table and held his hand out to her, asking for her dishes, and she put the fork down on her empty plate and passed it to him, while Steve stood up and walked his own dirty dishes to the sink.

“We can’t live like prisoners forever,” said Bucky, shaking his head.

<<>>

Later, when they were sitting on the bed together, Darcy said, “I don’t want to put you in jeopardy. Even if it means postponing school. It’s not that important that I start right away. I can always put it off a semester.”

They’d already agreed that as much as she hated the idea of a chaperone, it made sense for her to have someone accompany her to school— not just for security, but in case she had another panic attack. Taking the subway wasn’t a good idea, for the same reasons, which meant that someone was going to have to drive her. She’d been joking about it— his being her driver-slash-bodyguard, but it wasn’t so far-fetched, when they considered the options. She definitely didn’t want some stranger driving her around. But neither did she want him to expose himself unnecessarily.

She was sitting behind him, applying the special topical cream that Kayani had prescribed. His back had finally finished sealing over with scarred, but otherwise-healthy skin, and she knew that it was bothering him more than he let on— that it was tight and dry and itchy.

“It don’t have to be me,” he said. “Fact is, I was already talkin’ to Sam about drivin’ you in… ‘least ’til I can get in some practice drivin’ one-handed. His schedule’s pretty open the next few weeks, at least, since he cleared it to work on the words with me. There’s only a couple days you’d have to make other arrangements.”

“I mean, I can drive,” she said. “I think.” She didn’t want to admit that the idea of driving in Manhattan was pretty intimidating, even without the real possibility of a panic attack— but if she had to do it, she’d figure it out. “But I’d still want someone along, riding shotgun.”

He rolled his head a little, trying to loosen the tension in his neck. “Gotta admit, makes me a little twitchy, lettin’ you outa my sight in the city like that, so soon… I know you modern gals probably don’t like that, but—”

She dabbed some more of the cream onto his back, and then rubbed it in gently with her fingertips. “I gotta be honest with you, and I know it’s totally uncool, and like, a betrayal to the sisterhood and all, but… I sorta like it. Gets my motor running. Make me feel… safe. Special.”

“You _are_ special,” he said, his voice soft. “Not just to me, but… well, ‘specially to me… Don’t like the idea of you bein’ out there… vulnerable…”

She wanted to wrap her arms around him and hug him, but his back was all gooey from the ointment. “It’s frustrating, though. I hate not being able to just… go where I want. Like I used to.”

She felt bad as soon as she’d said it, knowing he’d probably turn the words around and blame himself. He’d been so demoralized by the discovery of the metal-detection device; he’d taken it as proof that he’d never really be free— never be able to stop looking over his shoulder. Not that he’d ever really believed otherwise, but she knew he felt guilty for pulling other people into the crosshairs, when he could’ve just stayed under the radar completely, as he’d been doing for the last three years.

“Kay,” she finally said, shifting back and screwing the lid onto the little white container. “All done.” He turned, shifting his body on the bed so that he was facing her, and she helped him put an undershirt on, so that the cream wouldn’t rub off onto the bedsheets.

Things had felt different over the past few days— a little sadder, a little heavier. Her period had arrived, right on time, and when she wasn’t able to sink into the easy comfort of physical pleasure with him, she’d started to realize that maybe Sam had been right about their using intimacy to avoid. Not that they’d consciously done so, but… there was some validity to it. It was only natural, to want to chase the good feelings and avoid the bad ones.

“We’ll figure it out,” she said softly, meaning the transportation issue, but it wound up carrying more meaning than that. She looked at his eyes, which were tired, looking down, looking at nothing. “C’mere,” she said, and she leaned in to give him a slow kiss— deliberate, communicative— and he let her do it, but he was far away.

“You seem sad,” she whispered, when she pulled back.

“I am, a little,” he said. “Feels like… all we can do is react. Like we’re still just playin’ our part in someone else’s game.”

“I love you,” she said, smoothing her hand against the side of his face, wanting to comfort him, feeling like it was all she could say, or do, in answer. Because she agreed with him, and it sucked. She could only hope that whatever forces were lined up against him, whoever or whatever was so bent on reclaiming him, would run out of gas before they did. It couldn’t go on forever. Or maybe it could, and it was just something you learned to live with. Like having one arm. It was exhausting, just thinking about it— the possibility of being hunted for the rest of their lives.

She craved resolution.

<<>>

“The body was more than a few days old,” said Romanov. She was sitting on one of the fancy leather couches in the penthouse lounge, looking too much like a regular person in a black warmup suit, her hair still damp from a shower, her legs tucked up beneath her on the seat cushion.

She and Barton had returned to the Tower in the early morning hours, had taken time to wash the smell of death off, and then called them for an informal meeting to share what they’d found. Ms. Potts was over the Atlantic somewhere, and had already been briefed electronically.

“How was she killed?” asked Darcy.

“It was ugly,” said Romanov, and stopped to take a sip of hot tea from a plain white mug. “She was restrained— her arms wrapped backwards around a beam, secured with some hi-tech restraints… SHIELD-grade. Duct tape over her mouth. She’d been sliced open on the side of her abdomen… was sitting in a sticky puddle. Bled out, most likely. It seemed… unnecessarily sadistic, if it was just a matter of shutting someone up…”

“You find anything useful?” asked Bucky. He refilled his coffee cup from a large thermal carafe, and stretched his arm to top off Darcy’s cup as well.

“There was evidence of a roommate,” said Barton. “Most of the place was pretty clean— too clean— signs of someone covering their tracks… but there was a pair of boots in the hall closet, probably from last winter. Women’s boots— but the wrong size for our dead person.”

“Could be something else,” said Steve. “Friend or relative, left them there.”

“Could be,” said Barton. “But my senses were tinglin’ in there… didn’t feel right.”

“You talk to the super?” asked Steve.

“Wasn’t a building,” said Barton. “Standalone. Duplex. Landlord wasn’t answerin’ the door at the address we got for him; I’ll be headin’ back there at a more reasonable hour— try to talk to him before the feds do.”

“Speaking of, you get anywhere on the P.O. box?” asked Steve.

“No,” said Barton, shifting in his seat, like his pants were too tight. “They’re givin’ me the runaround,” he grumbled. “Bunch of bureaucratic bull-crap. Can tell they’re enjoyin’ it…”

Steve raised his eyebrows. “I gotta go up to HQ today… you want me to see what I can do?”

Barton brightened considerably. “You serious?”

“I’ll do what I can,” said Steve. “You focus on that landlord; see what you can get out of him.”

“Gladly,” said Barton, and he elbowed Romanov, when she snickered ever so slightly, next to him.

“So what do we got? Don’t sound like much to go on,” said Bucky.

“We have a laptop,” said Romanov. “Or rather, evidence that one existed, but was removed. The power supply was still sitting there, like someone just yanked the cord and walked off with the notebook.”

“What good does that do?” said Darcy. “If it was stolen, or whatever.”

“We have a Post-it,” said Romanov, and she leaned to rummage in her pants pocket.

Steve deflated a little as he exhaled. “Please tell me you didn’t steal from the crime scene…”

“Please,” said Romanov, rolling her eyes, and pulled her phone from her pocket, setting it down in front of her on the coffee table.

“What’s on it,” said Bucky.

Romanov opened her photos folder and tapped on a picture of a yellow square of paper, and then rotated the phone so that it was right-side-up to the others, across from her. “Logins,” she said. “Passwords. Including one for a Google account.”

“We can get into their email,” said Darcy.

“And their search history,” said Romanov. “Even if they cleared it from the physical machine, their entire search history— going back years— will still be downloadable from Google’s database… unless someone took the time to log in and delete it, which most people don’t even realize is a thing they can, or should, do.”

“So why aren’t you doing that, like, right now?” demanded Darcy, leaning forward. She felt like snatching up the phone and doing it herself.

“We can’t log in from a traceable location,” she said, “and certainly not from within Stark Tower. If whoever has the laptop now is the holder of the account, or is monitoring it, they’ll be alerted as soon as we log in. I have an… errand to do in Chelsea this afternoon; I’ll take care of it then. I wouldn’t get your hopes up, though— if they were cavalier enough to write all of this down on a Post-it and leave it right there in the desk drawer, I doubt there’s going to be anything of value to find…”

“Maybe that’s the point,” said Darcy. “Maybe they left it on purpose, so we’d go looking… so they’d know if we were there, or… maybe they left something on the account to throw us off…”

Romanov picked the phone back up. “These are all possibilities.”

Darcy felt itchy, impatient. “Are we gonna train today?”

Romanov blinked at her. “Why wouldn’t we?”

“I dunno, you’ve been up all night? And it sounds like you have a lot of work to do…”

“I’ll be there at the regular time. What you do is your choice,” said Romanov. It sounded cold, but Darcy had learned that the woman was just straightforward, practical.

“I’ll be there,” she said.

<<>>

They were practicing at seven yards now, shooting side-by-side, in adjacent lanes, and would eventually move the targets out to fifteen.

“Why not the full twenty-five?” said Darcy, after they’d both emptied their magazines into the paper targets.

Romanov clicked the mag release button, dropping the empty magazine into her hand, and smoothly inserted a fresh one as she spoke. “You get much further than ten, fifteen yards, you’re not talking about self-defense anymore,” she explained. “Obviously other types of… objectives would require proficiency at increased distances, and would require a different weapon— but that’s not what we’re training you for.”

Darcy realized that the ‘proficiency at increased distances’ she spoke of was more along the lines of Bucky’s particular skill-set, even before Hydra got to him: sniping… and then later, assassinations… Most certainly _not_ self-defense.

They both emptied their magazines again, and then stopped, pulled off their earmuffs, and reeled in their paper targets. Romanov’s hits were concentrated in two perfect groups within the head and chest of her target; Darcy’s were still mostly scattered around the wider chest cavity, but she was getting better. There were a few stray holes through the abdominal and pelvic areas.

“That could still be a lethal shot,” said Romanov, circling a hole with a ballpoint pen. “Kidney. The target would need to get swift medical attention, or risk bleeding out.” She pointed to another one, between the ribs and hip, but farther over, near the edge of the body, and circled that one, too. “This one, though… he could last for days, if you just nicked the bowel. You’d have to wait for infection to finish him off. If you need to aim low, try to keep to the center.”

“How come you don’t have a fake ID?” asked Darcy suddenly. “You don’t seem particularly… concerned about your name being out there…”

Romanov set down the pen, and then removed her protective glasses, and started cleaning a spot off of them with the fabric of her shirt. “Before SHIELD fell, I wasn’t a target in a way that concerned me. I was more than capable of handling any attempts to… approach me, and I would have had ample warning.”

“And now?”

She’d finished wiping the spot, and put the glasses back on. “It was an adjustment,” she said. “When I dumped all of SHIELD’s files onto the internet, I exposed myself in ways that I hadn’t had to deal with before. Not just to potential enemies, but also to allies who hadn’t had all the facts… some of which were… incompatible with their ideals. It was a risk.”

“But you didn’t go dark, change your name…”

“I did go dark, for a while,” she said. She paused. “If you have a question, you can ask it.”

Darcy took a moment, trying to decide how to phrase it. “Does it get easier? Knowing you’re never really gonna be safe again? How do you… live like that? I mean, I look at you, and… you don’t even hide who you are.”

“Safety is an illusion,” said Romanov. “A lie people choose to believe, so they can do what they need to do.”

“Take the cliché example,” she continued, when Darcy remained dubious. “People choose to ride in cars every day, knowing full well that they could be gravely injured because some idiot is too busy looking at a phone. There’s no way to control that, defend against it— unless: you could easily guarantee a zero-percent chance of that outcome by simply avoiding cars entirely. But does any reasonable person do that? No. They accept that it probably won’t happen, and go about their business.”

“Yeah, but if people are actively hunting you…”

“So you play it smart. Take precautions. Prepare for the possibilities. But whether you live in strength, or live in fear: that’s a choice. Your choice.”

Darcy was quiet, thinking about it.

“Did you practice your draw?” asked Romanov, as she replaced her earmuffs.

“Yeah,” said Darcy, putting her own back on. She inserted a fresh magazine into the well of the grip and tapped it home firmly with the heel of her palm. “A little.”

“Show me…”

<<>>

She was hand-washing dishes with Bucky in the kitchenette after a late dinner, no word from anyone on any further developments. The kitchenette had a dishwasher, but they never had enough dirty dishes to justify using it, and Bucky liked the extra practice of doing chores one-handed.

Darcy’d had to restrain herself from checking in with Natasha all evening— wanting an update on the Google account, impatient to know what she was doing and whether she’d learned anything. It’s not that she didn’t trust the woman to inform them if there was anything worth reporting, but she was childishly impatient— a hyperactive puppy nipping at the heels of the trainers…

Bucky, for his part, was frustratingly detached, unconvinced that any of it would make any difference. Even if Romanov uncovered something— even if they got so far as finding out who was pulling the strings, it still wouldn’t mean the end… not for someone like him, who would always be valuable to forces who would seek to use him. Like Natasha, he seemed to believe that there was no ‘end’… no _safe_. What made him different from Romanov was that he wasn’t at peace with it— not when there were consequences for others. The best he could do was focus his energy on the things they _could_ control, like his sensitivity to the words.

The lights were low, her Starkphone playing Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together”— she was drying a plate that he’d handed to her after rinsing it, and she was swaying and humming and singing along… “ _Lovin’ you whether… whether… times are good or bad, happy or sad_ …”

Bucky had decided, after a number of trial runs, that of the collections she’d reconstructed so far, he favored her ‘60s and ‘70s soul and R&B playlist. He’d found that, like Steve, he thoroughly disliked electronica, so she saved that for when he was out of the apartment— she’d discovered just that afternoon that it was a good fit for practicing her draw, which she still wanted to do alone anyway, at least until she was better.

She was considering looking up some ‘30s and ‘40s stuff for him, but she didn’t know if it would just make him feel sad about the things he couldn’t reclaim. She’d seen an old record player in Steve’s room, and wondered if he’d already gone down that rabbit hole— she needed to get his opinion on it.

“I missed out on a lot,” he said suddenly, setting down the soapy sponge as he finished the last plate.

Unlike Darcy, who washed dishes one at a time with the water wastefully running the whole time, Bucky did it the old-fashioned way, filling the sink with soapy water and letting the dishes soak as he worked. Washing up was awkward one-handed, but the soak made it easier. He handed the clean dish to her, let the wash-water drain out of the sink, and then dried his hand on a dishtowel as he continued his thought.

“Music,” he said. “Ideas. Things like— civil rights… people goin’ to the moon. Don’t seem real, sometimes… how long I was sleepin’, on and off…”

She raised up on her tip-toes to stack the dried plate in the cupboard, and then threw her dishtowel onto the counter and came up behind him, hugging him around his midsection.

“It’s kinda nice,” he continued, “knowin’ that… well, you’ve been awake your whole life, but you still like listenin’ to stuff that people made before you were even born…”

“Why wouldn’t I?” she said. “When it’s good, it’s good… doesn’t matter when it was made. Didn’t people listen to oldies when you were a kid?”

“Wasn’t the same,” he said. “What I can remember. We didn’t have… access like you do. You could listen to the radio, go out and hear a band play…”

“What’d you like listening to?” she asked, and she was gently rocking her body as she held on to him from behind, just a hint of movement, their feet barely shifting.

“Don’t remember,” he said. “Can’t call up the music in my head; I just remember the feelin’… the room… all the people movin’. Maybe how it— there was a way it felt to breathe it in… the air… thick— almost stiflin’, all those bodies, pressin’ together, but in a good way… havin’ a good time… you knew you were alive…”

His hand had drifted down to rest on top of hers, where it lay against his abdomen, and then he turned so that he was facing her, their bodies still just a whisper apart, and though she’d never done any kind of ballroom dancing— his dancing— her left hand reached up to his shoulder like it was the most natural thing in the world, as his hand went to her waist…

And she knew the missing arm would have been bent at the elbow, lacing its fingers through hers on the other side, but she just rested her right hand against the curve of his side, right below the welded metal of the mesh, and they were swaying, and the song had blended into Smokey Robinson crooning _Ooo, baby baby_ … and it was slow and sad and beautiful, the simple slap of the snare moving them back and forth like a heavy heartbeat, full of promise, the air thick, just like he said, even though they were alone…

And it was like she was getting something she never even knew she wanted, maybe even would’ve made fun of it, if it’d been a scene in a movie— too corny, too romantic— but here, with Bucky, in the kitchen they shared, it was perfect, something she could never have planned or choreographed, put into words, because it was fleeting and real, but transcendent somehow… a kind of communion…

Her fingers curled against the side of his body like she was clutching the phantom hand, and he breathed in that heavy air, feeling it with her, his jaw resting sideways on top of her head as they swayed together…

And she was starting to see the wisdom in it, the folly of chasing that guarantee, that illusion of safety, when the real comfort was in moments like these, unscripted, ephemeral… the things you couldn’t schedule or capture or hold onto— impermanent, just like life— and saw all at once how you could miss it: let slip what really mattered, in thinking that the prize was reaching the refuge and stillness of the shore.


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: mild panic attack
> 
> also warning: fluff  
> \-------------------

Classes began right after Labor Day, and Darcy felt equal parts relieved and terrified that morning as she put on semi-respectable clothing for the first time in weeks, and even a little bit of makeup, which somehow felt protective— like putting on armor. The touch of red lipstick made her feel more put together, a shade more powerful.

She felt even more powerful when she strapped on her belly band and holstered her loaded pistol, and then pulled her shirt over the top of it. She felt like she was acting out a scene from a movie, where the protagonists make a big show of readying their weapons as they prepare for the big showdown.

“S’not very subtle,” said Bucky, as he watched her turning from side-to-side, looking at herself in the mirror. “You can see the outline every time you move.”

“I can’t take it onto campus anyway,” she said. “I’m just gonna wear it in the car, get used to having it out in the real world a little bit.”

He frowned and walked up behind her, lifted up her shirt enough to loosen the velcro on the band, and then rotated it around her body so that the holstered weapon lay hidden in the small of her back. “You should try wearin’ it like this,” he said.

“Tasha didn’t train me on that draw,” she said.

“Try it out,” he said, and then, “No, sweetheart— other way,” when she reached back with her palm facing out. “Palm towards you, just like your other draws. Just pull the weapon straight up and bring it around.”

“Huh,” she said, once she’d done it, awkwardly, taking care not to twist her ribs too much. “I’ll add it to my routine… maybe in a couple weeks.” She set the gun down and rotated the band back to the side-carry position.

“How’s the pain,” he said, smoothing his hand along the top of her arm.

“Better,” she said. “Definitely better than before.”

“Good,” he said, and he bent down to kiss the side of her jaw, just below her ear. She tilted her head, smiling as she leaned into it. “You ready?” he asked as he stepped back so that she could holster the weapon again.

“Think so,” she said, smoothing her shirt back down, and then puffed out a breath, looking at herself in the mirror again. “I should probably get going,” she said. “Sam said he’d meet me in the garage at 9:15.”

“I’ll walk you down,” he said, as he followed her through the apartment. “Got your backpack all set?”

Jane had given her a sturdy new backpack with a reinforced laptop insert as a back-to-school present, and she grabbed it off the couch where it was waiting for her. It doubled as her purse, and she unzipped the small front pocket to slide her key-card and Starkphone inside, along with the little zippered pouch that held her new ID, her gun permit, an ATM card for a new account linked to their fake IDs, and some cash.

“I feel like you’re gonna walk me to the bus stop for my first day of Kindergarten,” she said, trying to joke off her nerves. “Doesn’t help that I have to have someone drive me, like a little kid.”

“Nah,” he said. “Sam told me he was glad to do it. Doin’ him a favor— he’s got emails he’s been avoiding, and this’ll force him to take the time out to work on 'em while you’re in class.”

She nodded, barely hearing him, and then she looked at his face, went for honesty. “I’m pretty scared.”

“C’mere, doll,” he said, and she let him fold her into his body, and he tipped his head down, murmuring into her hair. “You’re gonna be fine.”

“What if I freak out in class?” she whispered. “Have another panic attack?”

“Then you text Sam, and he’ll come and get you.”

“What if I can’t even text?”

He smoothed his hand through her hair above her ear, and leaned down to kiss her forehead. “You’re gonna be fine,” he said again, and then he worried the edge of his lip, a look of uncertainty crossing his face.

“What is it?” she said, and she reached up to thumb the little dent in his chin.

He let go of her and rubbed the back of his neck with his hand and said, “I, uh… I got you somethin’.”

“Yeah?” she said, and stood there while he went into the kitchen, and she watched as he reached up to one of the highest cupboards and felt around for something. “Is it a weapon?”

“No,” he said, chuckling. He shut the cupboard and turned around and came back toward her, and she could see that he was holding a flat little turquoise box. “I was gonna give this to you when you got back, but I think now is better. Give you somethin’ to fidget with if you get nervous. Instead of rippin’ apart your thumbs.”

She set the backpack down and then looked at the little box that he’d handed to her— it said “Tiffany & Co.” on it, and her heart started thumping a little. Nobody had ever given her jewelry from a real jewelry store before. She looked at him again; she knew by the shape of the box that it wasn’t anything as terrifying as a ring— and thank God for that, because even as bad as she had it for him, that would have freaked her out— but he still looked nervous, like maybe he’d made a mistake.

She undid the white ribbon that held the box together, and then lifted the lid. There, on the flat cotton bed inside, lay a bracelet of tiny silver beads, all perfectly round and identical, like little metallic pearls. On the opposite end from the clasp was a single, flat, heart-shaped charm, in deep red enamel, outlined in silver.

“It ain’t nothin’ fancy,” he said, watching her as she pulled it out of the box. “I, uh… I had to borrow from Steve… I sent him out to the shop to pick it up for me.”

“I don’t like fancy,” she said, as she held it up to look at the delicate little charm, hanging from the beads. The vibrant pop of red standing out from the silver reminded her of a colorized accent on a black and white photo. “I love it,” she breathed. “It’s perfect.” And it was— a little retro, understated, classy.

“Yeah?” he said, and he was grinning shyly, obviously pleased by her response.

“Yeah,” she said, and then, “Help me put it on,” and somehow between his one hand and her free one, they got it undone and looped around her wrist, and then she held one side steady as he carefully operated the little lever to connect the ends together. She held up her hand and ran her other fingers over the smooth little beads, polished and gleaming in the light, and finally traced the little red heart that now lay against her wrist.

“I love it,” she said again, and looked up at him, completely touched by the romantic gesture, and he pulled her in for a soft kiss, and then sighed as he pressed his forehead against hers.

“Love you, doll,” he whispered. He kissed her again, and when he pulled back, she looked at him and smiled and used her thumb to rub at the little smudge of lipstick she’d left on his mouth. He turned his head to kiss her palm, and then he said, “Now let’s get you to school.”

<<>>

The first hour was the hardest. After Sam helped her find the building and gave her one of his encouraging shoulder squeezes, assuring her he’d stay close by in case she needed him, she’d entered the lecture hall on wobbly legs, certain for a few minutes that she wasn’t going to be able to do it, fighting the urge to turn around and flee, catch up to Sam, go back home.

But she breathed and focused and found a seat, and narrowed her world to the little wooden half-desk under her right arm. Though she’d never been on this particular campus before, she’d spent enough time in lecture halls that there was a familiarity to it all, and that helped settle her nerves a little.

Her new jewelry helped too, just as Bucky’d intended. With all the little beads, it was almost like a meditation or prayer bracelet, and she found it soothing to run her fingers over the little metal balls as she waited for the room to fill, trying to stay calm in the growing sea of strangers.

She’d been worried about her science deficits, but as she snuck looks around the room, assessing her fellow students and eavesdropping on their conversations, she realized that she needn’t have been: it felt like they were all there for the same reason as her— not for some hard-core genius track, like Jane, but to clear the way for fields that required a basic scientific foundation. She was right where she needed to be, and she leaned into that feeling as the professor finally arrived, called the class to order, and dove right into the overview for the basic anatomy course.

Later, on the drive home with Sam, she was playing with the beads of the bracelet again, and she abruptly broke the silence to say, “What are you doing a week from today? In the evening.”

“Me?” asked Sam, and Darcy laughed.

“Yeah, you,” she said. “Nobody else in here.”

“I don’t know; what day is that?”

“The twelfth,” she said.

“Not sure,” he said. “Have to check my calendar. Why?”

“It’s Bucky’s birthday,” she said. “I mean, not his real birthday. We came up with a new one. Back at the… at Stark’s place. The cabin. We talked about it one day, when we went for a walk. I don’t even know if he remembers…”

“You got somethin’ planned?” he asked.

“Not yet,” she said. “Maybe just a little dinner or something. Nothing big. I was thinking just you and me and Steve… small.” She added, in case he didn’t know: “It’ll be a hundred years.”

“I’ll be there,” he said, and he turned his head to nod as he looked at her.

“You can let me know later,” she said. “After you check your calendar.”

“Anything else I got goin’ on can be rescheduled,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

“Cool,” she said. “Um, don’t tell him, okay? I want it to be a surprise.”

“You got it,” said Sam.

<<>>

Exactly one week later she was taking a deep, fortifying breath, as she stepped outside the lobby of Stark Tower and onto the streets of Manhattan by herself for the first time. She felt a little out-of-body— paranoid and shaky— but she was determined.

The weather was changing, and they’d had a couple of cool, drizzly fall days; she was glad for the excuse to wear the light jacket that helped disguise her firearm, which she was hiding in the small of her back, the holster rotated around, like Bucky had suggested the week before.

There hadn’t been any new leads on the coffee lady murder, the browser history for the missing laptop turning up nothing of note. The apartment had been leased under the same false name as her employee record— no record of a roommate, no new information to go on. The P.O. box was another source of frustration, with the feds giving Steve just as much runaround as they’d given Barton.

Darcy was grateful for the lengthy assignments she had every night, to take her mind elsewhere— it felt good to learn, to ground herself in the world of facts… learning the names for things— and as Darcy made her way through lists of words for body parts, Bucky made his way through the Russian dictionary. It felt like they were both moving forward, in spite of all the dead-ends elsewhere.

She regretted missing a whole day of class, but as she made her way down the busy sidewalk, she reminded herself how much she wanted this to be a surprise, and that she wanted to do some of it herself. She’d schemed with Sam to pretend that she was going to school that day, just like any other day, when in fact she was headed to Grand Central Terminal, with all of its shops, just steps away from Stark Tower— no biggie.

The Tower actually had its own private link to Grand Central, but it’d been closed off temporarily as part of the security upgrades, so she’d had to exit the building and walk a block on the open street.

She merged her way through the crowds of pedestrians, waited for the light to change on the corner, and then crossed the street and pushed through the glass doors into the station, which was just as bustling, but louder, with people walking briskly in all directions, everyone intense, racing against some desperate internal deadline.

She made it down the wide, sloped walkway to the massive main concourse, with its iconic four-faced clock above the central information booth, and couldn’t help looking up at the vaulted ceiling high above, with its gorgeous mural of golden constellations against a blue-green background that was near in color to her Tiffany & Co. bracelet box. She gaped for a moment at its beauty, high above, though she knew she’d just branded herself a tourist, people brushing past her in frustration.

Her skin prickled at the press of people around her, everyone in a hurry, and she felt increasingly hemmed in by the deafening acoustics of the masses of workers, travelers, and tourists in the enormous, open room. Her fingers tingled as she noted the heavily-armed National Guardsmen standing in pairs against the walls, scanning the crowds. _Why did I bring a gun in here? Stupid_ … She was hyperaware of the heavy presence of the holstered weapon pressing against her back, feeling naked and obvious as she moved past the soldiers to one of the stairways going down.

The lower level dining concourse was even busier, or maybe it just felt that way, with less open space for so many people to move around in. She ignored the instant claustrophobia and focused on the objective, which was the bakery where she’d pre-ordered a devil’s-food cake online. She had a limited amount of time to pick up the cake, get it back to the Tower, hide it in the apartment, and then meet up with Sam again— Steve had been tasked with keeping Bucky away from the apartment, busy with a workout, which she’d arranged in advance to coincide with her cake-pickup mission.

She was starting to sweat, the light jacket feeling too stuffy indoors, the mingled odors of cooked food in the air, onions smelling like body odor… too many people… she blinked and breathed through her mouth and found the bakery and got in line, fidgeting with the little zippered money-pouch in her jacket pocket. _Hang in there_ , she told herself. Three more people. Two more. _Almost there_. Her turn.

The clerk was friendly and the cake was all ready to go, and they gave her a sturdy plastic bag to carry the box in, but she still had to stop and sit down on one of the concourse’s big wooden benches as soon as she got away, setting the bag down next to her and dropping her head into her hands, elbows on her knees, swallowing down the bile rising in her throat.

 _Four counts in, four out_. She was seeing black spots dancing behind her closed eyes, and her thoughts were racing, scattered. _Fuck_. She opened her eyes when she felt a rustling next to her, as an old white man parked his butt almost on top of her cake bag, sitting heavily down on the bench next to it; she flinched and moved the bakery bag onto her lap and wrapped her arms around it protectively. She was overheated and felt like she was going to throw up, but she didn’t want to take off her jacket and expose her weapon.

 _This was a bad idea_. Sam had volunteered to go with her, but she’d been cocky, wanting to be a big girl, prove something to herself, especially after having made it through an entire week of school without incident. Now she pulled her Starkphone out of her jacket pocket, wiped her sweaty hand on her stretch pants, and scrolled to Sam’s name in the messaging app, counting to fours as she tapped out her message.

_You still around?_

She waited, but there was no reply. Another wave of nausea ran through her. She needed fresh air, but her body felt like lead and she didn’t think she could make it up the steps. She rocked a little and opened her eyes, and saw a straw-haired lady across the aisle, also sitting on a bench, looking at her curiously. _Probably thinks I’m a crazy person_ , she thought, and she tried to smile in that way you do to strangers, one of those simple cues to let someone else know that everything’s fine— move along, nothing to see here, even if I am on the verge of losing my shit. The smile must have been enough, because the lady went back to her newspaper.

Her phone finally chimed with Sam’s reply: _Uptown already. You all right? You need me to come back early?_

 _Not sure_ , she texted back, her fingers moist and shaky. _In Grand Central. Can’t breathe. Can’t move_.

 _Shit, I’m sorry_ , came the quick response. _Shoulda gone with you. You want me to call Steve?_

She didn’t want him to call Steve. She didn’t want to blow it. She was already blowing it.

 _No bullshit assessment_ , he texted, while she was thinking about it. _Scale of one to ten. How bad is it_.

 _What’s a ten?_ She texted, and looked up as she waited, still doing her breath-counts, still seeing the swirling dots.

_You feel like you’re gonna pass out?_

_Can’t tell_ , she said. _Maybe_.

 _Stay put_ , he said. _Sending Steve. Where you at_.

She felt like a failure, and her eyes stung, but she managed to text out, _dining concourse_ , and then leaned over again, clutching the phone, trying not to crush the cake in her lap…

A few minutes passed and there was rustling next to her again, and the old man was getting up, walking shakily away with his crinkly Rite-Aid sack. She moved the cake bag back onto the bench next to her, wrapping her arms around herself, breathing shallowly now, forgetting her count, and the straw-haired lady was looking at her again, over the top of her newspaper, and Darcy wanted to scowl at her this time instead of smiling, because one glance was fine, but now it was just rude…

She was regretting texting Sam, because if she was going to make a fool of herself, maybe she should have just tried to walk her way out, even if she’d had to shuffle and stop and breathe and have people staring, but then she imagined passing out and the cops coming over, or the National Guard, and they’d find the pistol, and then there’d be questions, and she was blowing it, _blowing it_ , and people were looking… _don’t pass out_ …

She shut her eyes completely, ignoring everything but her count, breathing in and out, and when the panic finally went back down to about a six or seven, she opened her eyes again. She woke up her phone, checked the time stamp for Sam’s last text— it’d been eight minutes already— and then she looked up and saw him: Steve, in a terrible disguise— navy ball-cap and matching twill zippered jacket, looking like a TV version of a federal agent— pressing through the crowd, scanning for her, and she breathed out, long, relieved, rocking a little, and then he saw her and made a beeline…

“You okay?” he said, and sat down next to her, looking around as he spoke, and she looked down and grabbed his hand, feeling bad about how sweaty her own was as she pressed their palms together.

“Yeah,” she said. “I didn’t know if— I didn’t want to pass out on the main concourse, or the street… so many cops in here…”

“It’s okay,” he said, and she leaned sideways, rested her head on his sturdy shoulder. The straw-haired lady was gone, replaced by a frumpy business guy with an ugly tie, unwrapping a sandwich… “Gonna have to come up with some kinda story, though… Buck could tell I was lyin’ about somethin’.”

“What’d you tell him?” She was calming down, grounded by his presence, his solid body, his easy voice. He kept his head down, the brim of the cap hiding his face from the crowd.

“Said I forgot something I needed to do.”

She laughed weakly, and it felt good. “That’s it?”

“Yeah.”

“What’d he say?”

Steve chuckled. “He gave me a look that told me he was a hundred percent onto me, and said, ‘well you better go do that then.’ He prolly thinks I’m meetin’ a girl.”

“I doubt it,” she said, and took another long breath, counting in and out. “He, uh… he knows…” She let it trail off as Steve sat up a little straighter.

“Did you—”

“No!” she said. “God, no. He said something… when we were at Coney Island… the day you guys came and got us… we were on the beach, and he was remembering when you guys used to go down there… he said something, made me realize he knew… I think he always knew.”

“Yeah,” said Steve softly. “I guess he did.” He was still holding her hand, and he smiled when he saw the bracelet around her wrist. “He was real nervous about pickin’ this out,” he said, touching the little heart. “Took him hours, lookin’ at all the choices. Made me promise I’d let him pay me back for it…”

“I was looking into that,” she said. “How he’d be eligible for back pay, as a POW… plus disability from the VA, for his arm and other injuries…”

“It’s complicated,” said Steve.

“I know,” she said, and sighed. “Maybe, some day…”

The businessman was looking at them now, almost as rudely as the straw-haired woman had, but this time it was probably less about her, and more about thinking the guy in the navy cap looked an awful lot like Captain America.

“We should go,” she said.

“You feel okay to walk?” he asked.

“I think so.” She sat up. “Yeah. Thanks for coming to get me…”

“No problem,” he said, and squeezed her hand before letting go of it, and then he picked up the cake bag for her, and stood up and held his other hand out to help her up. Her legs were wobbly, but she wasn’t dizzy anymore.

“You still good to come over tonight?” she asked, as they slowly made their way up the wide steps to the main concourse.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” he said.

<<>>

She hung out in Steve’s room until it was time to pretend-come-home from school, texting Sam to let him know where to find her— she’d left her backpack with him in the garage that morning. It actually worked out, since she still needed to wrap the 78s that she’d bought online and had shipped to Steve. He was letting her have the old record player, saying that Bucky always liked music more than he did, and that he should have it. He’d helped her find a collection of wartime V-discs on eBay that he said Bucky was sure to recognize: Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Coleman Hawkins…

Sam showed up right on time before she was due back home, handing over her backpack.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “It wasn’t as bad as the other one. I’m fine now.”

“I shoulda gone with you,” he said, shaking his head. “Next time you wanna go on an excursion, take a buddy.”

“I will,” she said, and then frowned and said, “Aw, fuck.”

“What is it,” asked Steve, wrinkling his brow in concern.

“I forgot to get birthday candles,” she said.

“I can pick some up,” said Sam. “How many you need?”

“Well, I’m not gonna maul that beautiful cake with a hundred candles,” she said. “How about one for each decade? Unless…” She looked to Steve. “Do you think it’s a bummer? Counting all the years that he was… somewhere else?”

“Better not be,” said Sam. “I already sprang the three bucks for the novelty card.”

“So… I’m gonna leave the cake here, if that’s okay,” she said to Steve. “Can you bring it over with the presents when you come?”

“Sure thing,” he said. “You guys still want Italian?”

“Yup,” she said. “You know what he likes…”

“We’ll be there,” said Sam.

<<>>

“What you thinkin’ for dinner?” said Bucky, as the sun started to go down. He’d wandered into the kitchen, where she was studying anatomy at the table, and stood behind her, putting his hand on her shoulder, gently massaging her tight muscle where it joined to her neck. She was stiffer than usual, maybe from the panic attack, and she hated that she couldn't tell him about it, but there was no way to disclose it without revealing where she'd gone, and why...

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, reaching up to put her right hand on his, as she bent her body sideways in a stretch, reaching her other arm toward the ceiling. “I could definitely use a break, though.” She checked the time on her phone— the guys were due any minute. “I was thinking maybe Italian? We could order from that one place you like…”

“Lasagne?” he asked, and she turned and grinned at his enthusiasm.

“You read my mind,” she said.

“I’ll send a text, see if anyone else wants to go in on it,” he said, just as there was a crisp ‘shave-and-a-haircut’-style knock on the door.

“Why don’t you get that,” she said, trying not to give it away with her face. She closed her textbook and stood up, started to clear the table.

“Somethin’ goin’ on?” he asked, confused, but he headed over to the door and opened it, and she couldn’t help busting out a smile when Steve and Sam pushed their way in, loaded down with takeout bags, wrapped packages, and the bakery box.

“Surprise!” she said, clapping her hands together, as he backed up, letting his friends come in.

“I heard you ordered some Italian?” said Sam, setting the bags of food and gifts on the table, as Steve took the cake box to the kitchen, carefully setting it down on the counter along with a bottle of wine.

"Hope that wine is okay," said Steve, while Sam discreetly passed her a little Rite-Aid bag— birthday candles.

“What is all this?” asked Bucky.

“September twelfth,” she said, beaming. “Happy Birthday!”

“Happy Birthday,” said Steve and Sam, echoing her.

“Holy cow,” he said, rubbing his scruffy chin with his hand, like he didn’t know what to think.

“Did you forget?” she asked. “Remember when—”

“I do,” he said. “I mean, I did— I forgot— but now I remember.” His eyes moved to her, roved over her face. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t gotta say nothin’,” said Steve, pulling plates out of the cupboard. “Sit down and eat, while it’s still warm.”

Sam went to help Steve with the dishes and silverware, and to hunt up a corkscrew for the wine, and Bucky took the opportunity to move over to Darcy, where she was pulling food containers out, and he grabbed her hand, turning her and pulling her into him.

She wrapped her arms around him and whispered, “Is this okay?”

“Yeah,” he said, and he bent down to kiss her forehead, and then he tilted his head and turned to Steve and said, “That’s what that was about this morning, wasn’t it. You guys. You were up to somethin’.”

“I’m not sayin’ a thing,” said Steve, schooling his features in amusement, as he brought the plates over.

“You even go to class today?” he asked Darcy, looking between her and Sam.

“No comment,” she said, fighting a grin as she laid out paper napkins and put silverware down, while Sam avoided the question entirely by busying himself with the wine.

“You’re all a buncha filthy liars,” said Bucky, his eyes sparkling.

<<>>

They demolished the food, finished off the rest of the wine as they digested, and then Darcy finally got up and went into the kitchen and took the cake out of the box. She arranged ten multi-colored birthday candles on it, and then straightened up and said, “Fuck!”

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” said Bucky, looking over from the table.

“I don’t have any matches,” she said. “Goddammit…”

“Use the stove,” he suggested.

“Right,” she said, looking around. The long receipt from the takeout was stapled to one of the empty food bags, and she ripped it off and rolled it into a tight, twisted spill, lit it on one of the stove’s gas burners, and then quickly lit all ten of the candles with the large, licking flame, shrieking as she almost burned her fingers before tossing it, still burning, into the sink, turning on the water to douse it.

“Okay,” she said, picking up the cake tray, the glowing candles flickering as she slowly moved it toward the table. “Here goes.” She hummed a wobbly pitch and then launched into the ‘Happy Birthday’ song, Steve and Sam quickly joining in, and Bucky grinned ear-to-ear and started laughing at the end, as Darcy finished it off loudly, with gusto.

“Make a wish,” she reminded him, and he took a deep breath and let it out, licked his lips, and then shut his eyes. After a few seconds, he opened them again, leaned forward, and blew out all the candles.

<<>>

“Jesus, Steve.”

Bucky had been surprised and excited about the vintage phonograph and records, and equally enthusiastic about Sam’s gift of the complete works of Raymond Chandler, but the real emotional punch had come from Steve’s gift, which came in a small, beat-up looking cigar box, the sight of which made Bucky’s hand shake as soon as he pulled the wrapping off.

“Is this—”

“Yeah,” said Steve, softly.

“How did you—”

“I’ve had it for a while,” said Steve.

“What is it?” asked Darcy, leaning forward to see.

“Just some little things of mine,” said Bucky, stirring his fingers through the contents. “Kept it under my bunk, or— hey, my old Zippo,” he said, pulling out a battered-looking steel lighter. “We coulda used this for the candles,” he said, flipping open the top, but it failed to light when he flicked the roller with his thumb. “Or not,” he said, chuckling. “Needs fuel.”

“How’d you—” he asked Steve again.

“Well,” said Steve. “I mean… after you… when you fell, I sent what few things you’d left behind.” He shifted in his seat. “Becca kept most of it after your folks died. I looked ‘em up, a few months after I came outa the ice, seein’ if… well, you know they never had kids of their own, but a niece on her husband’s side, she stored away a lot of the old stuff, thought maybe it’d be valuable some day. She let me take whatever I wanted…”

He sighed, his eyes a little sad. “I’ve been hangin’ onto it; wasn’t sure how you’d feel about it. I got your medals, too, if you want ‘em…”

“Oh man,” said Bucky then, pulling a tarnished golden pendant from the box. It was small and circular and hung from an old watch chain.

“Yeah,” said Steve.

“What is it?” asked Darcy.

“This belonged to my pop,” said Bucky, curling his fingers around it, enclosing it in his palm. “My ma gave it to me, when I shipped out. I used to wear it with my tags. An’ then… after Azzano, I stopped wearin’ it. Was feelin' bitter... figured it weren’t doin’ me no good, so…” He sighed and opened his hand again, looking at it. “Maybe that was the wrong move.”

“What is it?” she asked again, trying to get a closer look.

“Saint Christopher’s medal,” said Steve.

“What does it mean?” she asked. “I’m a heathen; I don’t know anything about that kind of stuff.”

“Saint Christopher’s supposed to protect travelers,” said Bucky.

“Oh,” she said.

“I guess I’m glad now I took it off,” he said. “Otherwise it’d be at the bottom of some stinkin’ Hydra cesspool, along with my tags, and the rest of my bones.”

Sam cleared his throat and Steve got his worried face and said, “Maybe this wasn’t the best time to—”

“No,” said Bucky, and he put the medal back into the box and closed the lid, looked up to meet Steve’s eyes. “Was the right gift, at the right time. I’m glad you got me my things back. It’s all I got left from before. Only proof I got that—”

He pushed away from the table and stood up, and they all waited, worried, but what he wound up saying was, “I think I wanna hear some of that music now.”

So they opened some beers, and set up the phonograph, and Darcy watched Bucky’s face light up as he listened to the toe-tapping beat of the swing music of his youth, surprised to find that she recognized most of the tunes herself, even if she’d never heard of some of the artists— like the Andrews Sisters, whom Darcy realized were basically like the Destiny’s Child of their time…

She watched his feet moving under the table, and took a swig of her second beer and said, “When you get your new arm, you’re teaching me how to dance to this,” she said.

He grinned at her with one of his sexy smiles and said, “I can do that,” which was unexpected…

She raised an eyebrow and licked her lips and said, “I’m gonna hold you to that,” in a sassy sort of way, and something about the energy that was passing between them had the other two guys shifting in their seats and collecting the empty bottles, helping to clean up, and then they were thanking them for the good time, and wishing Bucky a Happy One Hundredth Birthday one last time, and then they were out the door and gone…

And Darcy put on another 78 and dropped the needle, and the Andrews Sisters started singing about ‘Apple Blossom Time’, and Bucky came up behind her, moving her side-to-side, his arm wrapped around her midsection, and he kissed the back of her ear and whispered, “How’s your ribs…”

And she answered, “Good enough for dancing,” only she wasn’t talking about dancing, and his lips trailed down her neck and by the time the three-minute record was over they’d peeled off their clothing like it was part of the dance, leaving a trail of discarded fabric on their way to the bedroom, and he kicked the door half shut while he kissed her— an instinctive move that she loved every time he did it, because it was so human, an artifact from his life before— as much proof as anything in that cigar box that there was a continuity there— that Hydra hadn’t burned everything out of him— that they hadn’t won.


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry  
> \--------

A couple weeks after his birthday, two unexpected things happened.

The first was that fake Wells died of complications from pneumonia. Barton was at HQ, working with the recruits, when he got word, and he texted Bucky and Darcy before anybody else. It wasn’t the outcome they’d hoped for— the woman going relatively peacefully without supplying any further information— but something about her passing took a weight off of Darcy’s chest. One fewer evil soul on the planet…

The second thing that happened was the FBI finally shared with the other kids, and the team got a name for the P.O. box that Reynolds from R&D had been accessing: a woman named Patricia Hansen, a pig farmer from Vermont. It made no sense. The feds had already investigated, and their conclusion was that the elderly Ms. Hansen was a victim of identity theft.

Nevertheless, Steve, Barton and Natasha had taken it upon themselves to pay a visit to Ms. Hansen themselves, which left Sam to hold down the fort up at HQ— and that was why Bucky was riding along with Darcy to school that day.

They were both a little nervous about driving— she for the panicky stuff and he for one-armed reasons— but the idea of getting on the subway, pressed in by people, was worse, so they stuck with the car. The route was familiar by now, after three weeks of watching Sam do it, and Bucky helped her watch out for suicidal pedestrians, aggressive cabbies, and the death-wish bicycle messengers who wove through the traffic like fast-flying fish.

It was drizzling when she pulled into a parking garage near the school, where Bucky was planning to sit for most of the morning, content to read one of his detective novels while she was in class. They were switching sides, walking around the car— she wanted to unstrap her gun and put it in the glove compartment— and she pulled her backpack on all the way to free up her hands first, when he asked her to toss him the keys.

She was doing it, throwing them in a smooth arc over the top of the vehicle, and his hand came up to grab them out of the air, grinning at her, and that’s why he was distracted and didn’t see the woman coming up quickly behind him…

And Darcy saw her a second before he sensed her, turning, and her mind first latched onto the wheelchair, wondering _why_ , but the next thought— the really confusing one— was that it made no sense that the straw-haired woman was there— the same one from the dining concourse in Grand Central Terminal— and before Darcy could even react, the woman’s hand was coming up, and she drove something forcefully into the middle of Bucky’s chest as he turned, and maybe he would have told her to run if he’d had a chance, but instead he just took one odd, rasping breath and then collapsed, his body falling heavily into the wheelchair that the straw-haired woman held ready, and Darcy was just screaming at her, “ _What did you do?!? What did you do?!?_ ,” still not really processing that they were under attack…

And it never even occurred to her to draw her weapon or run, because she just kept yelling it as she came around and saw him slumped there, and _was he dead? Oh God_ … 

And then the woman’s arm was coming up again, and something heavy struck Darcy in the head and she was down…

<<>>

She must not have been out very long, because she was still lying there, next to the car, on the oil-stained floor of the parking garage, and she could see the feet of the woman and the wheels of the wheelchair and those were Bucky’s shoes, and the woman was pushing him up a ramp into a van, and Darcy tried to move, roll— trying to go for the weapon now, but the backpack was in the way and her head was exploding, and everything was too slow, and she wanted to scream for help, but all that came out was a grunt, and _where is everyone, isn’t anyone seeing this?_ and the ramp was retracting and then she heard the heavy door of the van sliding shut and she knew then that the woman was going to drive away with him, and she said, “No,” but it came out like a moan, and then the woman’s shoes came over to her quickly, and she reached down and slapped some ordinary metal handcuffs around Darcy’s wrists and was pulling her up…

And the woman said, “Come on, then,” like Darcy was a reluctant child, like it was somehow her choice, and she stood and stumbled as the woman tugged on her, dragging her by the cuffs, steering her to the front passenger seat of the van, and she complied, stunned and confused, and felt herself sit down, and then the door shut, and she noticed right away that there wasn’t a door-release lever on the inside…

She twisted around in her seat, trying to see Bucky, see if he was breathing, tried to say his name, but the woman slid into the seat next to her, said, “Face forward,” and then leaned across her body to attach Darcy’s cuffs to a metal bar on the inside of the door, and then sat back in the driver’s seat, buckled herself up, and then started up the van, like it was all perfectly normal and they were just going for a ride together.

“Is—” She choked, an odd kind of hiccup, almost like she was going to vomit, and then completed the thought. “Is he dead?” She still had her backpack strapped on, but she couldn’t lean back anyway, the tug of the cuffs on her wrist keeping her slumped forward at an uncomfortable angle.

“Shouldn’t be,” said the woman; “They’ve used that on him before,” and she was digging through a zippered bag, like a carry-on makeup pouch, and she pulled out a needle. Darcy noticed that the woman had beautiful blue-green eyes— or they would have been beautiful, if her face hadn’t been so tired and cold, her clothes stinking of cigarettes and something else, like the sour smell of a hangover, and Darcy was still confused, still trying catch up, trying to understand why the woman from Grand Central Terminal was kidnaping them.

 _I have to scream_ , she thought, but instead of screaming she said it out loud: “I’ll scream,” like it was a threat, like it would somehow change the woman’s mind, and they could all just go their separate ways, but the woman turned and jammed the needle into Darcy’s thigh, right through her pants, quickly depressing the plunger, and it was a deep ache, like a terrible bruise inside...

“No you won’t,” said the lady, and she pulled the needle back and dropped it back into the bag, and then twisted to grab a blanket from behind the seat, and draped it over Darcy’s arms, to hide the way she was restrained, and it looked like one of those blankets people gave as craft-gifts, fleece with fringe, with little John Deere tractors all over it…

“What’s happening?” asked Darcy, her voice sounding sleepy. “Where are we going?”

“Home.”

<<>>

She heard a car-door slam, rocking the van, and she was awake, and she was completely confused for a few seconds, couldn’t figure out where she was, why she was asleep in a strange car, with a blanket partially covering her, and then she felt the handcuffs and she remembered.

Her head was still aching from where she’d been struck, and she lifted her upper body to look out her window, and she could see woods, and then looked out the driver’s side, and she saw that they were at the house— the White Plains house, the evil one with the crooked windows— and the straw-haired lady was struggling, pushing the wheelchair, Bucky’s body still slumped over in it, up a makeshift plywood ramp laid over the steps. She made it to the top, put the brake on the wheelchair, and fumbled in her pocket for some keys, unlocked the door and then took the brake off again and pushed him inside. The door closed a minute later, and then all was quiet.

Darcy pulled on the cuffs, rattling them on the steel grab-bar, tried to make her hand smaller, pull it through, but it was clearly futile. She could feel her gun— still pressed solidly against her back, safe in its holster. It was the only remaining advantage she could think of— the woman hadn’t patted her down, hadn’t figured her for a shooter. If she could talk her way into getting the cuffs off before the weapon was discovered… _yeah, right_.

She asked herself, _What would Natasha do_ , but that was stupid— Natasha would never have been captured in the first place.

They’d been inside for a while— maybe the van was as far as Darcy was going— and she felt sick, not knowing what the woman was doing to Bucky inside the house. She looked around, trying to find anything else she could use to her advantage, even if it was just information, but there was nothing she could see that told her anything beyond what she already knew, which was that she was fucked.

She screamed then, as loud as she could, for as long as she could, because it was becoming clear that she had nothing to lose. Then she screamed again. And again. It was harder than she would have thought, screaming like that, and after three or four times, her throat was already raw, and she could taste blood.

The front door of the house opened, and the straw-haired woman came down the plywood ramp. Darcy got a better look at her this time: she was wearing faded jeans and a purple sweatshirt and looked like someone you’d see shopping for bulk frozen food at the discount grocery store— just a regular, tired, thirty-something white woman. She was carrying a roll of silver duct-tape. She opened the driver’s side door and ripped off a strip of the tape, leaned over, and slapped it across Darcy’s mouth, smoothing it down to make sure it was on good and tight.

“Soldier-boy heard you screaming,” she said, and then she smiled, showing her nicotine-stained teeth. “He didn’t like it.” Then she sobered again. “Besides, there are families around here.”

And Darcy remembered that— remembered thinking it was a nice neighborhood, but also remembered that the creepy house was a bit off on its own… too far away from any neighbors for her to make a break for it unless she had more of an advantage…

The lady unhooked Darcy’s cuffs from the grab bar, and then scooted back out the driver’s-side door and went around to open Darcy’s side, and dragged her out of the van.

“Behave, or I’ll knock you out again,” she said, slamming the door on the van, and then she pushed Darcy ahead of her, over to the house and up the ramp to the door, which was cracked open, and then she was being shoved inside, into what was essentially one big room, with a kitchen in the rear, and a tiny closet of a bathroom visible in the back. One closed door probably led to a bedroom.

It was dark, the light fixtures old and yellowed, and the room stank of sweat and cigarettes and something sharply chemical, like Pine-Sol. There was a round wooden table to one side, covered with a mess of all sorts of tools and old Rubbermaid containers and dirty dishes and newspapers and a jumbo-sized plastic bottle of cheap whiskey. There were a couple of wooden chairs— one of them at the table, the other just sitting out on the cement floor, which Darcy noticed was stained with what she guessed was probably blood. A large blue tarp waited, off to the side.

Bucky was sprawled on the floor face-down, like he’d been dumped dead off the wheelchair, which had been pushed against the wall, out of the way. His ankles were bound with duct tape, and there was a metal cuff attached to his wrist. The cuff was connected to a thick wire rope that led up to a sturdy hook hanging from the ceiling, and then back down to a manual-crank brake winch that was secured to the wall. A matching winch was mounted on the opposite wall, fitted not with a cuff but with a heavy-duty hook with a latch, like you’d see on a lever hoist. It hung limp, unattached for the time being.

Darcy whimpered behind the duct-tape.

“Had to give him more ketamine,” said the woman, as though to explain, and then she pointed to the chair. “Have a seat.”

Darcy sat down awkwardly in the chair, the backpack still on her shoulders, her hands cuffed in her lap. She was breathing heavily through her nose, and the sick fear was spreading through all of her cells now, because clearly this was where whatever was going to happen, was going to happen, and she looked at Bucky’s body as she leaked tears, searching for signs of life, and she imagined she could see it, the slow, barely-there rise and fall of the fabric covering his back, and she just wanted to see his face one more time… to smile at him and tell him that she loved him and say goodbye…

The woman approached her with the duct tape and then assessed her, considering. “Let’s get that pack off of you first,” she said, and grabbed a pair of scissors out of a rusty can on the table. It took her a while, but she managed to cut through the thick straps of the pack, Darcy flinching even at the proximity of the scissor-blades, and the woman let the pack fall to the floor, and then she pushed it away with her foot, toward the table.

“Arms up,” she said, and then, “Bend them— against your chest,” she clarified when Darcy misunderstood, raising them above her head at first. Once her cuffed hands were against her chest, like someone praying, the woman looped a few passes of duct tape around her upper body, right over her jacket, and then crouched down to do the same to her ankles and calves, binding her all the way up to her knees, and she sighed at Darcy’s shaking and crying, and said, “Save it— you’ve got a while to go yet.”

She went over to the table and sat down in the chair there, shook a cigarette out of a rumpled pack and lit it, and then sighed again. “Almost there,” she said, to nobody, and then said, “Shit,” tiredly, like someone who’d had a long day at work, and set the cigarette down in an ashtray that was stuffed with butts.

Darcy was watching every move she made— watching her hands, wanting to know what she was going to do before she did it, as if that would make any difference, and they sat there for maybe an hour, waiting, the woman just lighting cigarette after cigarette but not really smoking them much, and she was drinking the cheap whiskey, pouring it into a coffee mug from the large plastic bottle.

Eventually she leaned over and lifted up Darcy’s backpack, and unzipped the big pocket and pulled out her anatomy book. “You studying to be a doctor?” she asked, as she flipped through the pages and tapped the ash off the end of her cigarette. “How noble of you.” She pulled out the laptop next, but just set it aside on the table, not bothering to open it.

She opened the other, small pocket on the front of the backpack, pulling out Darcy’s Starkphone and her little zippered money pouch. “Shit,” she said, looking at the phone, and stood up and reached for a hammer on the table, dropped the phone onto the cement floor, and then squatted down and smashed it a few times with the hammer. “That didn’t have a tracker on it, did it?”

Darcy was pretty sure it didn’t, and also knew they wouldn’t have been gone long enough to be missed. The most she could hope for was someone at the parking garage reporting their suspiciously abandoned vehicle, its doors standing open—to have it traced to Stark— but it would likely be hours for all that to happen, and even then, there was nothing to lead anyone here…

The woman sat back down and opened the little zippered pouch, pulling out Darcy’s cards and cash. “Nicole Faramond,” she read out loud, as she looked at the ID, and snickered. “Well,” she said, and leaned to stamp out her cigarette. “Can’t say mine’s any better.” She set aside the cash and the ATM card, and then stopped when she got to what Darcy knew was her concealed-carry permit.

“Really,” said the woman, looking over at her, and then she tossed the card down and stood up.

She bent over next to Darcy and started patting her down, and froze when she felt the gun in the small of her back, and then ripped her shirt up, below the duct tape wrapping, exposing the belly band and holster that’d been well-hidden beneath the jacket.

“I don’t allow guns in this house,” she said slowly, her voice cold, and she walked to the rear of the room, to the kitchen area, opened a couple of drawers, slamming them shut, and came back, holding a dishrag and a wooden spoon. She wrapped the dishrag around her hand and then Darcy felt her pulling the gun carefully out of the holster.

Darcy turned her head, needing to see, and watched as the woman threaded the handle of the wooden spoon through the trigger ring, cautiously, like it was a snake that could strike, and then used the spoon to carry the Glock like a poisonous, cursed thing, opened the door, and flung it from the steps, along with the spoon and the rag.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said, as she came back in and shut the door. “You shouldn’t have brought a gun into my house.” She was angry, breathing with it, and she lifted up Darcy’s shirt again, ripped off the belly band and checked it to make sure there were no more surprises. Finding it empty, she tossed it aside, on the floor.

Darcy made a noise behind the duct tape, and the woman looked at her and said, “You gonna scream?” and when Darcy shook her head emphatically, the woman ripped the tape off her mouth. “Well?!?”

“I’m sorry,” said Darcy, gasping gulps of air, wincing from the burn of the tape. “I didn’t know.”

The woman went back to her chair and sat down and just stared at her, a murderous look on her face. “He didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what,” said Darcy, her heart pounding, and then said, “I don’t— I think he doesn’t remember.”

“How nice for him,” said the woman, finally looking away, and then she reached for the whiskey, topped off her mug, and lit another cigarette.

<<>>

It’d probably been another hour, and the woman seemed to almost be nodding off. Darcy needed to go to the bathroom, but she was waiting to see if the lady would fall asleep, and then Bucky started to moan and the woman snapped awake, and said, “Finally,” and she stood up and said, “Let’s get this show on the road.”

He’d turned his head on the floor, and Darcy could see some of his face now, could see that he had duct tape over his mouth, and his eyes were fluttering, and then they opened, and he tried to sit up, his breath picking up dramatically as he felt the the binding around his ankles, and his attempt to draw his arm closer was stopped short by the cuff and the wire rope, and he made a noise of protest behind the tape and yanked against the rope, and then he lifted his head and saw Darcy in the chair and he stopped.

“Why don’t you sit up, and I’ll let you know how this is going to work,” said the woman, and Bucky turned his head to look at her, blinking, and then back to Darcy, and she could see that his face was stricken, his chest heaving, and he yanked on the wire again, violently, and pulled himself up to kneeling, which gave him a little more play with the cuff, and the woman said, “You can pull on it all you like. Don’t you remember those? I took ‘em from one of your old holding cells.”

When he put more of his weight into it, pulling down, she added, “Ceiling’s reinforced— enough to stand up to the arm. You’re not gonna budge it.”

She sighed then. “Why’d you have to get rid of the arm? I had this all set up for the arm— not for… this.” She gestured to the empty left sleeve of his shirt, and then her face twisted into anger. “The arm was _mine_ ,” she said. “Mine by right. He left it to me.”

“Who,” said Darcy, speaking instinctively, before she could think about it. She was trying to catch Bucky’s eyes, to speak to him with hers, but all she could read in him was regret.

“My father,” said the woman, and then she was laughing a little, but it wasn’t a funny laugh, a note of hysteria in it. “He said it wasn’t personal— can you believe that?”

“I’m sorry,” said Darcy, trying to sound sympathetic, reasonable.

“It’s not your fault,” said the woman, and she’d walked carefully behind Bucky, over to the winch, and started to crank it, taking up all the slack on the wire attached to the wrist cuff. “Wasn’t theirs, either,” she said, staring at Bucky as she said it. “Just bad luck. Right?”

As the wire grew taut and she continued to crank it, Bucky’s arm was being forced into a raised position, pulling him up, and as she kept going, he was eventually forced to stand, wobbling with his ankles bound together, his arm raised fully above his body. Once it was as tight as it could be, with his feet still flat on the ground, she locked it, and then walked back around to see him from the front, assessing her work.

With his ankles taped together, he couldn’t really move— could only try to keep himself balanced, so that his weight wasn’t pulling his arm out of its socket. Even so, he pulled on the wire again with his cuffed wrist, this time sustaining the force for a good five seconds, but the hook it was strung through didn’t waver.

“I don’t know how we’re going to do this without the arm,” she muttered, ripping her hand up in the air in a ' _what the hell_ ' gesture. “There’s nothing there to—” She cut herself off, clearly having thought of something.

“Hang on,” she said, as though they were all electively working on a project together. “I’ll be right back.” She swiveled and banged out the front door, leaving them there alone.

As soon as she was gone, Bucky made a noise behind the tape and started tugging on the cuff again with all his strength, trying to rip out the hook in the ceiling, and Darcy breathed, “ _Bucky_ ,” and tried to stand up, but the duct tape around her lower legs made her topple immediately, and she fell, hard— taking most of the impact on her hip and shoulder, the pain like an electric shock— and she couldn’t get up on her feet again, the binding making it impossible, and she was trying to worm her way over to the table, to get something to cut the tape with, and she’d barely made it a few inches when the door opened again.

“Back,” said the woman, as casually as if they’d all been watching television together and she’d had them pause for a bathroom break. She was holding a nasty looking metal hook with a wooden handle— like something you’d pick up hay bales or firewood with. “I think this might work.”

She stepped around Darcy’s body on the floor, unconcerned by her change in position. “You don’t have to sit in the chair if you don’t want to,” she said. “I just thought you’d be more comfortable there, since we’re gonna be a while.” 

She set the hook down on the table and picked up the scissors again, and went over to Bucky and confidently cut a ragged line up the left sleeve of the T-shirt to the neck-hole, and the shirt fell away, hanging off his right shoulder and exposing the left side of his body, and she was momentarily distracted by the silvery mesh cover, reaching out to touch it with her fingertips, and he violently jerked away from her.

He swayed and would have fallen over if he hadn’t been held up by the wire, and he growled behind the duct tape— an angry, feral noise— and pulled on the cuff again, his arm shaking from the effort, as though he were hoping to pull the flesh and bone of his wrist right through the metal... probably would have, if it'd been possible...

The woman stepped around Darcy’s body again, picking up the baling hook on her way to the other winch. She leaned over to grab the huge latching hook that dangled on the end of the metal winch-rope, and secured it around the wooden handle of the baling hook. She started to crank the handle on the winch, letting out about eight feet of wire.

“This is gonna hurt,” she said as she approached Bucky with the savage-looking twist of metal, “but there’s no helping it. You had to go and get rid of the arm,” and he swiveled his torso away from her instinctively, but there was very little he could do with his one arm held taut above him and his ankles bound, and the woman _tsked_ and said, “Hold still; it’ll go faster,” and Darcy rolled, trying to see what was going on, and then she heard Bucky’s muffled scream behind the duct tape…

The woman said, “You’re as bad as the hogs, with that screeching,” and then she stood back, breathing heavily, and quickly moved to the winch, turning the crank to take up the slack on the wire that was now pulling on the handled curve of metal— it was sunk in and out of Bucky’s flesh like a giant fish-hook, the bend of it securely wrapped around his titanium collarbone on the left side.

He was effectively held in place now, being pulled from both sides by the winch-wires, and it was like something out of a horror movie, or a macabre reenactment of some religious painting of torture and martyrdom, the blood dripping down his left side, his chest heaving, jaw shaking, and Darcy wept at the sight, moaning the words out: “ _Why— why are you doing this… who are you even_ …”

The woman was still breathing heavily, almost like she was excited now, and she said, “Why don’t we let the Soldier explain.” And she walked back over to Bucky, stood in front of him, just staring for a moment, and then she blew her smoke in his face and ripped the duct tape off his mouth.

He gulped in air, his head sagging, sweat dripping off his forehead, and he didn’t speak for a several minutes, still recovering from the brutality of the wound. The woman was patient, returning to her chair at the table, topped off her mug again and took a long drink. She tapped her cigarette in the ashtray, waiting.

Finally, he spoke. “You’re the girl,” he said, his voice ragged, shaky.

She took a long drag on her cigarette, and blew out the smoke, and then she said, “I’m glad you remember.”

“I didn’t,” he said. “Until now.”

“But you got my message,” she said. “The command.”

“I didn’t understand,” he said, pushing the words out with difficulty. “I didn’t— I was acting on instinct.”

“What message,” said Darcy, feeling faint from despair. “What are you talking about.”

“The word,” said Bucky, his head sagging. “I understand now— why it bothered me… why it brought me here… go back… mission site… but how—”

“He told me everything,” said the woman. “Eventually. I demanded that much, before I joined up for real. He owed me that. The truth. That he ordered it— or at least, approved it…”

She blew out an angry chuckle. “Those shit-stains, they code-named it _homeland_ , at the time— probably thought it was funny. I didn’t know if it’d work, though— the return order, after all these years— or if it would stick after you crashed. I guess the suggestion was enough— put it into your head…”

“Who are you talking about?” asked Darcy.

“Pierce,” said Bucky, still struggling to speak clearly. “This house… I remember it all now. It belonged to him… his family… it was a job… maybe my first, for him… his wife… his— the daughter, the diplomat. They weren’t— it was a job. He sent me… only…”

“Only I wasn’t supposed to be here,” said the woman. “That wasn’t part of the plan. I was supposed to be in Vermont… but I was being a brat— I didn’t want to go to the pig farm, stay with creepy old Aunt Patty… I wanted to go to the lake house, with Mom and Laura…”

“I called it in,” said Bucky. “I remember— I don’t know why… not supposed to… no witnesses… but I called it in. You were just standin’ there. You were in a nightgown… white. Like a tiny ghost… standin’ in the doorway over there, lookin’ at what I’d done…”

He breathed heavily. “You were so small.”

“I was six,” she said, stoically. And then she looked at Darcy, where she still lay, bound, on the floor. “We waited all night, him and me. Must have been five hours or more. Just sitting there. Looking at my mom, my sister. Do you know what that’s like? Do you know what it’s like to see everything that made up the thoughts and the feelings of the person who loved you most in the world, splattered all over the floor? And Laura— she was just lying there, her neck all purple where he’d choked her. He didn’t even shut her eyes…”

She was staring blankly in front of her now, maybe seeing the memory in her head. “He held me in his lap, until they came and got me. Took me away. To the pig farm.” She ground out her cigarette. “I’ve had nightmares about you for my entire life.”

She stood up, and grabbed the roll of duct tape, moved in front of Bucky again. “And now you’re gonna be the one who waits. And watches. And know what it’s like to feel everything inside you die. Because my father was wrong. It _is_ personal. I had to wait for him to die, to do this, because he didn’t understand, wouldn’t allow it. And then you got away from us… thought you could hide…”

“You can’t control him anymore,” said Darcy, even as she knew the words were pointless— that the woman had all the power, that they had nothing. “The words don’t work anymore— he won’t be your puppet…”

The woman made a scoffing sound. “I don’t want to command him. I want him like this. Aware. So he can suffer.” She was inches away from his face, staring at him. “And when I’m done with you, they can have you back. Do what they want. Recondition you, I guess. I don’t care.”

She ripped off a piece of tape and covered his mouth again. “It’s taken too long to find you,” she said, “but I’m gonna see it through. And when I’m done you can go back. We’ll wait together again, you and I. Only this time you’re the one who’ll get taken away. I expect they’ll be happy to see you. You should be happy too, you know— you’ll only suffer now, and then you won’t have to remember any of it. If we could all be so lucky…” She swiveled away from him then, returning her attention to Darcy.

“I’m sorry,” she said, as she squatted down next to her, where she lay crying on the floor. “This wasn’t the original plan. But those idiots— they botched the whole thing. I guess that’s what I get for going outside the organization, huh?”

“I couldn’t believe it, really, when he actually showed up here,” she continued. “I saw the whole thing, on the trail cams— couldn’t believe it really worked, slipping in the command like that— it was the backup plan in case he went berserk and slaughtered the whole stupid team.” She chuckled. “Sort of wish he had— would have been cleaner. What happened to Erica, anyway? Did she die in the crash?”

“Was she…” Darcy was mumbling out the words, feeling like what remained of her thoughts, of her hope to get out of this, were being scattered like dried, dead bits of leaves, nothing left to hold onto, everything crumbling… “Was that her name… the… fake…”

“Yeah,” said the woman, and she was ripping off another length of tape.

“She’s dead,” said Darcy, and at least that was one good truth to take with her, wherever she was going, and she wondered if oblivion was cold…

“I’m sorry it has to be you,” said the lady, and she really did seem sorry as she hovered over her, with the strip of tape. “I’d tell you it’s not personal, but I’ve been hearing that lie for too long— I won’t do that to someone else. So I’ll just say I’m sorry, instead. But it’s the right thing. You can see that, right? To make him suffer, while he still can. Because he doesn’t get to have this. I’m sorry; he just doesn’t, and he should know that.”

“When I saw it, on the cams, three hours too late… the way he looked at you, when you pulled him back from it. The way he trusted you. Not like… not a handler. Something else. I couldn’t pass it up— you understand. Because all my life, I’ve been wondering: how do you get revenge on something that can’t even feel? It was the chance I never could have hoped for...”

She covered Darcy’s mouth with the tape then, patting it down to make it secure, and then she pushed up briefly to put the roll back on the table, and picked up a long, curved knife— maybe for boning fish— its blade glinting in the yellow light… and then she returned to Darcy’s body, kneeling heavily onto her chest to hold her steady, and Darcy could hear Bucky screaming behind the tape that was covering his mouth, and the woman lifted up Darcy’s shirt and made a deep, careful cut along the side of her abdomen. She was concentrating, taking her time.

Darcy was keening in her throat, tears leaking from her eyes as she felt the blade go in, and she felt her bladder release from the fear, and then after a long minute of pain like nothing she’d ever felt, and something pulling on her inside, the lady was done cutting her, and she lifted her legs off of Darcy’s chest and sat back.

“That should do it,” she said, and Darcy could feel the blood dripping down her side, and she wailed behind the tape, calling for Bucky… calling for her mother, who didn’t even love her… and she could hear Bucky fighting the restraints with everything he had, wanting desperately to save her, both of them helpless…

“Do you want to sit in the chair now?” asked the lady, whatever her name really was. Something-Pierce, apparently. Hydra royalty. An honor she didn’t seem particularly interested in— in a way, just another one of their victims.

Darcy didn’t reply, lost in her own shock and pain as the blood oozed from her wound, and the woman just shrugged her shoulders and returned to her chair. “Suit yourself. It’ll be a while. By design. It’s taken me a lot of practice to perfect it.”

She kept the bloody boning knife in her hand as she considered Darcy’s anatomy book, still open on the table before her, and said, philosophically, “Sometimes it’s easier to learn by _doing_.”

She turned her cold eyes to look at Bucky, who was still straining against the cuff, his eyes on Darcy, tears dripping off his face, the blood already clotted around the hook in his flesh. “It’s all for you, now,” she said. She set her knife down, lit another cigarette, and topped off her drink, and then leaned back in her chair, comfortable.

“Enjoy your night.”


	34. Chapter 34

Bucky was yelling at her in the dream and it was all wrong… she knew something was off, because he didn’t do that— he wasn’t _mean_ like that— but she was powerless, forced to play her role in this story. She was cutting up apples with the long knife and it shouldn’t hurt and she was doing it wrong and why was he so _mad_ and it was making her cry…

When she woke up, relieved for a split-second that it wasn’t real, it was very quiet, and the sticky pool of blood underneath her body had grown, and she knew where she was, the smell of her own fluids now as strong as the stale smoke and the Pine-Sol, and she wanted to go back to the dream, back to Bucky, even mean and angry.

She wondered what size puddle would mark the point of no return— too much blood, the herald of her death— and she could see the blue tarp off to the side, at ground-level with her eyes, and she knew it was for her, and she didn’t want to be wrapped up in that thing, her body cold and forgotten somewhere on that property, cursed and alone forever.

She was very tired and very sad and some part of her just wanted it to be over.

It was dark in the room— late at night now, apparently— but she could see the dirty gym shoes of the woman, still in her chair at the table— could hear her steady breathing— and Darcy rotated her head against the floor, trying to turn toward Bucky, hoping he was awake, wanting to speak to him with her eyes before she fell asleep again— probably forever this time.

She could see the outline of his body in the dark, still hanging there, balanced by the winch-ropes, his right hand pulled high like an appeal to an unhearing savior… That was the worst of it, really— not that she was dying, but that it wasn’t even over for him… maybe never would be— and it was the part that made leaving him so hard. She couldn’t save him or avenge him or even kill him as she knew he would want, rather than be taken again; there was nothing more she could do. Her death was meaningless.

Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness now, and she could see that his eyes were closed, his head bowed, silent, and she moved her feet, just a little, trying to draw his attention, hoping he would hear her, see her, communicate somehow, without arousing the anger of the woman in the chair— Darcy didn’t want that lady’s voice to be the last thing she ever heard… she wanted that to belong to Bucky, even if it was just the rustle of his body, an intake of breath…

She made another little movement, and then stopped when the woman’s breathing grew louder for a moment, something heavy about it, and all at once Darcy understood that she had passed out as well— maybe the whiskey finally getting to her, or the fatigue of the hard work of murder…

She tried to roll a little, stopped when she felt the tug of the wound in her side, afraid to make it worse, and she thought of the duct tape— if she could somehow get the roll, tape the wound… or even better, the belly band, which still lay discarded by the chair— she could make it tight, put pressure on it… but even as she visualized it, she knew that with her arms bound to her chest, there was no way…

But she was awake, for now, and the woman was not— and that was an advantage, and she could hear Natasha in her head: _use it_ … maybe she could at least get to Bucky, do something for him, before she lost consciousness again…

If she could get to the winch…

And she rolled sideways, out of the pool of blood, quietly, ignoring the pain, afraid to breathe, worried that the pounding of her heart would pump the blood faster, and she was on her stomach now, and she took a moment, resting, and then one more roll, onto her back again, and now she could see the woman clearly, slumped in her chair, head back, definitely asleep— hands in her lap, still holding the curved knife loosely, her mouth slack and ugly…

And she rotated a little on the axis of her hip, so that she could roll away from the woman, toward the other wall— toward Bucky. She could hear his breathing now too, softer than the woman’s, almost silent, and she wanted to touch him, rouse him, but she could see the winch for the arm cuff, and she knew she could get there, if the woman stayed asleep, and so she kept rolling, one slow turn at a time, and it felt like the hardest work of her life: making her way across the filthy floor, pausing after each effort, her head swimming, dizzy…

There was no way to reach the handle of the winch without standing up, and she didn’t know how she was going to do it, how to get the leverage without the use of her arms, even if she didn’t have an open, likely mortal wound in her gut, and she thought, _well, it’s just like the worst sit-up you’ll ever do_ , and she tried and failed several times, only able to lift a few inches, the pain excruciating, before giving up, gasping, tears of frustration running down her face…

And then she heard a little sound, something quiet but human, and she turned her head and saw that Bucky’s eyes were open, and he was looking at her in the dark, his chest shaking as he cried without sound, and she could read it in his eyes, that he’d already thought her gone, completely overwhelmed to see her not only alive and awake, but halfway across the room…

She looked back at him, eyes wide, and she tilted her head toward the woman, sleeping in her chair, and Bucky turned to look and then snapped back to her quickly, his breath picking up…

She redoubled her efforts then, bolstered by his gaze, and she rolled to her side, almost in a ball, and did a sort of wind-up with her curled body, trying to build the momentum to roll herself onto her knees, and she went once, twice, and then _pushed_ as she rolled, and she made it, her legs now tucked under her chest, kneeling, and then she was able to sit up, if not straighten, her arms still trapped against her by the tape, her head swimming dangerously for a good thirty seconds…

She breathed there, on her knees, and she resisted the pull to shut her eyes, to give into the sleepy tug to unconsciousness, focusing on the winch, making it her objective, and she turned to look at Bucky again, her eyes fierce, and he nodded minutely, saying, _do it; keep going_ …

And she took a few more fortifying breaths, preparing, and she bent her toes, getting the balls of her feet under her and then leaned back on the heels of her sneakers, and she breathed again, readying herself, and then _pushed up_ , and almost toppled immediately, dizzy, seeing spots, bigger, almost blinding her…

She was wavering, uncontrolled, losing her balance with her legs bound together, but she swiveled and made it work to her advantage, falling into the wall next to the winch, and there was a bump and a bang as she made contact with it, steadying herself, and she was sure she’d blown it, both of them frozen then, staring anxiously at the woman in the chair, waiting for her to respond, but she didn’t stir— her deep breathing continued, heavy on the inhale, her body weighed down in a chemical sleep…

Darcy braced her back against the wall for a moment, grateful for the support, waiting for the dark spots to go away as the blood slowly made it back to her head, and then turned toward the winch and leaned over, letting it take the weight of her upper body, placing her clasped hands around the lever to release the lock.

She was watching the woman’s eyes as she did it, with a too-loud _ka-chunk_ , and then she grasped the crank handle, and she could feel the wound ripping, breaking open what small clots had formed, as she pushed and pulled to crank it in the other direction, and the ratcheting noise of the winch sounded like the loudest thing in the world, going _clackety-clack_ as she let out the wire again, Bucky’s arm slowly lowering in the darkness of the room…

She let it out as far as it would go, which wasn’t much— just enough for him to kneel on the ground again with his arm fully relaxed— but at least now he had enough slack to release the tension on the other side, the wire that was pulling on the hook through his flesh, and to lift up and use his hand, his fingers bloodless and shaking.

He flexed a few times, trying to get feeling back into his hand, and then he took a breath and held it, and he grasped the wooden handle of the hook and he drew the sharp curve of metal slowly out of his body, his eyes squeezed shut, head tilted to the side, jaw tightly clenched as he kept himself completely silent…

And then it was out, followed by a fresh stream of blood from each puncture point, and he stilled his shaking hand enough to unlatch the hoist hook from the wooden handle, controlling the hook-end of the wire as he set it carefully on the cement so that it wouldn’t slam down and wake the lady up…

And then he looked at her, blinking, and as close as she was to collapse, and afraid to hope, she still felt like cheering, her eyes saying it— _yes; God yes_ — because no matter what happened from this point— even if the woman woke up, even though he was still tethered with the cuff— Bucky now had a weapon…

And she’d locked the winch again and sunk back down to the floor— standing too difficult, too dizzying— and he asked her with his eyes and a move of his head to come to him, and she made her way over, kneeling, a few inches at a time, and _God_ , it hurt, but she was happier, feeling like he had a chance now, at least to do some damage, to go out fighting…

And when she made it to him, she almost fell into his body, hard to be quiet as her fingers touched his skin, savoring the comfort of his smell, the warmth of his body, aware now that she was cold, and she looked up at him through her wet eyelashes and she reached her bound hands up to his face, her fingers finding the edge of the tape on his mouth, pulling at it, careful, not wanting it to hurt…

And he jerked his head to the side to help her, his mouth hanging open once it was off, pulling in air, silently, looking at her, and together they got hers off as well, and their lips found each other for one sweet moment, shaking…

And then he pushed her away, gently, and held up the baling hook, his eyes moving to the tape around her body.

He used the sharp end of the hook to rip into the strips that were wound around her arms, careful not to cut her skin, working at it until it split all the way down, releasing her…

She was still trapped in the metal handcuffs— no way to get those off— but she could move more freely now, steady herself, balance, and she sat back and turned onto her side so he could also get the tape on her legs, and when she was free she looked to the woman again, and he did too, and then he looked into her eyes and put his hand on her cheek and mouthed the word— silent, intense: _Go_.

She didn’t want to leave him— wanted to find a way to release him, get that cuff off so he could go with her— there had to be a wire-cutter somewhere, maybe in one of the drawers… or maybe she should take the hook, and drive it into the woman’s body while she slept… but with her wrists still cuffed together… if she was clumsy with her attack— if she tripped and woke her too soon— if she failed to end her with the first strike…

As if Bucky could hear her thoughts, he touched her face again, shook his head, mouthed another word: _time_ , and then looked down to her clothing, soaked in blood, his expression intense, and she understood— there was no time, maybe already too late, even now the woman could wake at any second— she had to get help, get to a hospital before she collapsed, bled out… And he held up the hook again as if to say, _I’ll be all right_ , and she accepted the lie because he needed her to.

And then he stared at her for a moment, his eyes darting between hers, memorizing her, and then he risked a few more seconds to kiss her one last time, and her tears were leaking hard as she felt the scruff of his face with her fingertips, savoring the last taste of him, wanting to stay, preferring to die with him rather than alone, on the road somewhere, but he mouthed it once more, pleading now— _go_ — and she nodded, telling herself it was temporary— that she’d send help for him, if she didn’t die first…

She took another look at the woman before she began to move again, and then she pushed up a little, marveling at the ability to walk again, now that her legs were unbound, but she had to go slowly— too dizzy upright, the spots dancing there again, her fingers tingling, cold— and she began to back away, toward the front door, one silent step at a time, feeling sick, unsteady… grateful now for the cement floor— no squeaky wood— fighting the urge to run, now that she was committed, but knowing she couldn’t, not until she got far enough away… also knowing, in her heart, that running was out of the question; she didn’t have the strength, her blood pressure already dangerously low— would likely be crawling before she even made it to a house… if she made it at all…

She didn’t take her eyes off the woman as her hand slowly turned the knob on the front door, and she felt the latch release and the door popped open a crack, her hand controlling it, and then there was a creaking, and the sound of the crickets outside, and she froze, a blood-soaked statue, lips parted, no breathing, not a sound… and she heard the woman take a deeper breath and let it out, her chest rising and falling with the sound of it, but she didn’t wake.

Her eyes still on the woman, Darcy slowly eased the door open, just enough to slip through sideways, and then she took one last look at Bucky, seeing the relief on his face that she was doing it— she was really getting out— and he just nodded to her and pressed his lips together, sending all of his strength and love to her through his eyes as she slipped through the doorway and escaped the house.

She was crying as she inched her way down the rickety plywood ramp, careful, her head swimming, knowing it’d be over if she tripped or lost her balance, fighting the urge to go right back up and into the house again, sick to be leaving him behind, but knowing her escape was the only chance for either of them…

She was already seeing it in her head— the memory of the neighborhood… she knew if she followed the tire-track path through the little wooded area, she’d come to the street with the evil mailbox, and then the other houses would be there, just down the street and around the first corner— the house with the basketball hoop… nice people who would help her… and she could use a phone, she could send help— she just had to stay silent, stay awake… and she had a horrible vision of crawling down the road, looking behind her to see the straw-haired woman gaining on her with the knife, catching her, finishing the job…

She’d made it to the bottom of the ramp, and she was almost ready to break into a run as her shoe hit the dirt, her instincts demanding it, when all at once she froze— her breath stuck in her throat— because she saw the wooden spoon, lying there on the ground, and she remembered the way the woman had flung it, along with the rag and…

And her eyes were sweeping the ground frantically then, moving over the dark shadows in the grass and ground-cover and dirt, looking for anything that didn’t belong— something solid and shiny and mechanical, and then her eyes caught it: the handgun… lying near the base of a tree only about twenty feet away, like it’d hit the tree-trunk and fallen to the ground, waiting for her to find it again. To pick it up. To use it.

And she knew that Bucky would be furious with her, that even now he was probably rejoicing in the knowledge that her every step was taking her farther away from that house and closer to safety, but she didn’t care… because there was no way— no _fucking_ way— she was going to leave that woman alive to hurt him more or hand him back over to Hydra— not if she could go back in there and end her with the certainty of a bullet…

She knew it like the most basic of truths— not even a question. She had to try. Even if it meant using up the little time she had left, because _God, yes— she wanted to live_ — but not if it meant walking away, knowing she had a real chance to save him, the gun making the critical difference to tip things to her advantage.

She was crunching her way slowly on the dirt and grass, each footfall sounding like a beacon to her location, her intent— the unmistakable noise of _sneaking_ — the night too quiet, just her and the crickets, but there was no helping it… and then she reached the tree and she crouched down, and her hands were shaking as they touched the cool metal frame of the pistol, and she could have wept from the solid comfort of it— the undeniable truth of its purpose, its capability— and she was suddenly filled with a violent thirst, and she knew it was because she’d lost too much blood… she needed to hurry.

She’d loaded the gun herself that morning, so she knew she had a full magazine of fifteen rounds, but she needed to chamber the first one, and she did that there by the tree, clumsily, the maneuver difficult with the handcuffs on… but holding it in a secure grip with both hands, just as Natasha had taught her, was no problem at all…

She made her way back to the house like that, creeping in the moonlight, the gun held in front of her like a ward, and she felt the power of it— the knowledge that she was the only one there with a gun… the stupidity of the woman for revealing that… and the clear, cold certitude that she would squeeze the trigger if the door opened— that she would fill that fucking bitch with bullets, firing until the gun locked up.

She hadn’t pulled the door completely shut when she’d slipped out, and now she eased it open another crack with just a tiny push of her shoe, and it creaked like something from a horror movie, like the drawn-out tension that colored the dread of a jump-scare, and she could see the surprise and distress on Bucky’s face as she revealed herself in the doorway, almost instantly transforming to resolve as he saw the gun in her hands, and he stopped what he was doing with the hook— he’d cut the tape around his ankles and had been sawing at the reinforced metal winch-wire, trying to weaken it...

He raised himself up, standing ready with the baling hook as he watched her line up her sights on the sleeping woman in the chair, and she knew she had to be very careful, the handcuffs still limiting her control— she had to make it count…

And maybe there was a noticeable shift in the air when he stood, or a cool draft from the door standing open, or maybe people just have a sixth-sense for being in the line of fire, because the lady suddenly opened her eyes and then dove out of the chair a split second before Darcy squeezed the trigger, the round splintering through the wooden seat-back instead, lodging into the wall somewhere behind it…

The sound of the gunshot was like an explosion in her ear, and she was totally unprepared for it— all she could experience for a few seconds was the shock of it, and the ringing in her ears— and she could see, more than hear, the knife clattering to the floor as the woman scrambled away, instinctively barreling herself somewhere behind Bucky, who was the only real cover besides the table in the bare, open room, and Darcy was blinking, confused, but she fired again, into the narrow space to the right of Bucky, wanting to make it clear that she was in control now, and that the only outlet was no longer an option…

She could hear the woman making some kind of sound, hiding behind Bucky, matching his movements as he tried to give Darcy a clear shot, and it was like a game to her, staying just beyond his reach with the hook— _was she laughing?_

Darcy crept a little closer, trying to remain steady, control the space… She was coming around by the table, and she felt her foot step on the knife, and she looked down for a split second, distracted, and the lady took that chance to make a break for the bedroom door, but Darcy reacted instantly, firing again, driving her back into the shadows behind Bucky…

And he swept his hand out, as much as he could while still tethered, fending her off with the hook, so that she was driven into the rear of the room again, giving Darcy another chance— both of them herding her, together, in the same direction…

Darcy got off another shot, but missed again, the woman darting to the side, and the round hit an old fire extinguisher on the back wall instead, filling the rear of the room with an explosive cloud of white powder, throwing everything into confusion…

She fired again, into the cloud, panicking, unable to see where the woman was now, but she could hear her voice, taunting her and coughing: “ _You’re not very good with that, are you_ …,” and Darcy fired again, into the cloud, angry…

And she could hear the sound of something metal, dragging on the cement like an heavy metallic claw, and then the shape of the woman emerged from the cloud, and she was lifting and then swinging a shovel with surprising force, and it connected right into Bucky’s jaw, swiveling him around with the impact, and he stumbled and dropped the hook, the metal clanking on the floor as he tried to regain his balance, pulling himself up by the winch-wire, spitting blood…

And Darcy couldn’t get a clear shot, the woman somewhere behind him, and Bucky recovered too late, going for the hook just as the woman reached it, and then he gasped and arched backward as she drove it into him like he was a piece of meat, hooking him somewhere near his spine, taking him with her as she stepped back, using him now as a human shield…

His hand was scrabbling backward, trying to grab at her, until the pull of the winch-wire tugged his arm forward, stretched taut in front of his body by the pull on the cuff, and once she had him under control, the woman spoke, each word punctuated with the seriousness of her intent:

“ _Drop. The. Gun_.” And she yanked on him with the hook to make her point, and he gasped and clenched his teeth against the pain, but he had Darcy’s eyes now, and his resolve was as strong as ever…

The white cloud was dissipating, having showered the floor with powder, like someone had blown up a sack of flour, and Darcy’s hands were shaking from the adrenaline and anger, her ears ringing from all the shots.

“No,” she said, almost a whisper, because this wasn’t supposed to happen, and she cursed her lack of tactical training— in the past few weeks her aim had improved dramatically, Natasha proud of her tight groupings, her focus and precision, but targeting a mobile, human being with a hostage was nothing like shooting at a piece of paper…

“I’m sorry, doll,” whispered Bucky.

“Shut up,” said the woman, and she pulled on him again, savagely, and he hissed at the pain, and the woman said, “How dare you tell her you’re sorry… how _dare_ you…” And she pulled again, livid, and his eyes fluttered, his jaw shaking, and Darcy knew she had to do something, had to end it…

And that was when she figured it out, thinking about the paper target, Natasha’s ballpoint-pen circles around her stray shots, and she was breathing hard, knowing she was going to do it— needing to: the woman a mad dog, who had to be put down…

Darcy still held the gun steady in front of her, and she spoke only to Bucky. “Do you trust me,” she asked, squaring her stance.

He didn’t hesitate: “Always.”

“Hold still,” she said.

And the woman never saw it coming, but Bucky knew what she was about and he braced himself as Darcy took careful aim, below the ribs, left of the kidney, and then she did it quickly, before the woman could tug on him again and fuck up the shot—

She squeezed the trigger, aim unwavering, good on the follow-through, unflinching, as the round punched right through his body and into the woman behind him.

<<>>

Darcy stepped closer, arms still outstretched with the gun, shaking now in the wake of the hit, as Bucky stumbled, falling forward on his knees, and as soon as she had a clear shot she took aim, and pulled the trigger again.

“You okay?” she asked him without looking, her hands still firm on the frame of the gun, tracking the stumbling, bleeding woman behind him, trying to decide whether to take yet another shot and finish it. It looked like she’d gotten her in both the liver and then the jaw, pieces of her face hanging off, and it was disgusting, and that was just fine…

“Been better,” he said, grimacing as blood leaked from the bullet hole in his side, a nice clean shot, through-and-through, and he ignored it while he scooted forward on the cement, needing more slack on the wire so he could reach his hand to his back, fingers searching for the hook...

“Need help?” she asked him, but her eyes were on the woman, who was slipping and sucking in air and dripping blood all over the floor as she tried to breathe, the blood mixing with the powder on the floor to make pink-streaked lines where she was sliding and dragging her way in circles, like a gun-shot animal limping in bloody snow, confused…

“I got it,” said Bucky, wincing as he pulled the hook from his body for the second time, and he tossed it away, the metal clinking on the cement, and then pressed his hand to the gunshot wound. “I’ll be okay,” he said, and he worked his jaw, reaching to massage the joint where he’d been struck by the shovel.

And then he said, “But you won’t,” and he turned, watching her in concern as she remained standing, eyes and weapon still tracking the dying woman… “Sweetheart, you gotta go now… get to a house… get help… or look around in here, see if she got a phone…”

“I’m not leaving you again,” she said, squeezing the grip, as she continued to follow the woman’s pathetic movements with the barrel of the gun, and her ears were still ringing, and the spots were getting bigger, swirling before her eyes, and she was _tired_ , and so thirsty, and she again wondered if she should just take another shot, finish it off, because the thing stumbling around now was no longer a human… definitely an _it_ … 

Her heart was pounding and her hands felt cold and clammy, and she wanted to sit down. Needed to be done. And she started to crouch, still holding the gun, unwavering even as her energy flagged completely, and she heard him say it again, the worry raw in his voice: “Sweetheart— Darcy—” and he was trying to move to her, but he was stopped by the limit of the winch-wire, and she really needed to lie down…

And she could do it now, could finally rest, because the thing had stopped flailing around at last, had fallen down on its side, twitching and bleeding to death on the floor, and Darcy had done that— made that happen— and it was choking on its own fluids, struggling to breathe in, and still Darcy waited, kneeling… the gun still steady, trained on the body…

There was a grotesque gurgling sound, and Darcy finally sat back on her heels, and lowered the weapon, and then she tilted over, exhausted, and she could hear Bucky calling her name from far away, through the ever-present ringing in her ears— or maybe those were sirens in the distance; she couldn’t tell the difference anymore…

And she mumbled, “I think I’m gonna have permanent hearing damage,” and it was a joke, making herself smile, because who cared about permanent hearing damage if you were already permanently dead… and it was a good way to go: smiling… and then she finally succumbed to the blood loss, and passed out, her fingers still wrapped around the gun.


	35. Chapter 35

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the last real chapter... there’s just a short little 1500-wd epilogue after this.
> 
> Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who has been reading, commenting, bookmarking, or leaving kudos.
> 
> This community is amazing and I feel lucky to be a part of it.  
> \------------------------------

Steve had stepped out to get a bottled water from the vending machine, and so he wasn’t there when Darcy first regained consciousness and started calling for Bucky, and she was trying to sit up, but she was still attached to an IV and a urinary catheter, and had monitors attached to her fingers. The nurse had come in and was trying to calm her, checking her vitals, and she looked over to Steve as he hurried back into the room, tossing the unopened bottle of water onto his chair.

“I don’t know what she’s saying,” said the nurse, a heavy-set woman with a blonde ponytail and pretty blue eyes. “Is it a name? Family member?”

Darcy visibly relaxed when she saw Steve, and he smiled at her and said, “Hey,” and then, “It’s okay, sweetheart, he’s here— David’s here; he’s fine— he’s on another floor.”

And she got it then— they were in a hospital— they were _safe_ , both of them— and they were using their fake names, and she lay back and let out some of the panic she’d felt when she’d first woken up.

“Is he— how is he?” she croaked out, and then, “Need water…” Her throat felt like dry gravel. Steve turned to grab the bottled water, but the nurse shook her finger at him.

"I need to monitor her intake," she said. “I’ll get her some ice-water in a cup.” She left to go do that, and Steve pulled his chair up closer to her bed. Darcy reached out her hand, the one with the IV in it, and Steve took it, comforting her with his warm touch.

“He’s fine,” said Steve. “Ready to leave. He tried to come and see you, but they won’t discharge him ’til Kayani signs off on it. Took a lot of arm-waving to get him signed over to her care— she doesn’t have privileges here— but Tony can be… persuasive…”

“Why’s he on a different floor?” she asked.

“You were in pretty bad shape when you first got here,” he said. “They just moved you in here from the ICU last night. You needed surgery to close up your abdomen, a blood transfusion…”

“What happened,” she said, and she reached her free hand under the shitty hospital sheet and pulled up a little on the gown, her fingers finding the edges of a bandage there. “Don’t remember what happened after…” And she looked at Steve and said, “I know that I killed her. I killed that lady.”

“Yes,” he said, and he squeezed her hand. “You’re gonna have to talk to the cops a little, now that you’re awake… I mean, it was pretty clear you guys were the victims here, but…” He looked down, shook his head, overcome for a moment. “God damn, Darcy.”

He looked up again when he’d regained his composure. “There were security cams in the parking garage, they caught the whole thing. No question, the both of you were taken against your will…”

“How come— nobody saw? When it was happening…”

“The attendant was playin’ some game on his phone,” said Steve. “Don’t think it woulda mattered anyway,” he said, when Darcy’s face hardened. “That lady was fast; she had you guys out of there in less than five minutes… she knew what she was doin’… hard to imagine, small woman like that bein’ able to take down Buck…”

“She stabbed him with something,” said Darcy. “Right in the heart, I think. She said— was it ketamine?”

“Woulda killed a regular person,” he said.

She suddenly tensed again, trying to sit up. “The cops— Bucky— what…”

“Yeah,” said Steve, and he pressed his lips together. “You got lucky; there was a neighbor out late, walkin’ a dog, heard all the gunshots. They had half the responders in town there— police, fire, paramedics… lotta people saw him, saw that he wasn’t… a regular kind of guy. He refused to talk to any of them, until they agreed to call me, got me over here.”

“Reporters?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “We got lucky there; Pepper’s got people controllin’ the story… at least for now.” He sighed. “But he’s gonna be taken into custody, one way or another, as soon as Kayani signs him off medically. She’s been delayin’ it, actually— giving us time to talk to the lawyers that Tony sent over. We’re tryin’ to work out whether he’d be better off goin’ civil or military… seein’ if we can influence that…”

“What are they charging him with?” It made her feel sick, thinking of him going to prison, after everything they’d been through.

“Feds want to charge him with treason and multiple counts of capital murder, just for starters…”

“No,” she said, and her chest squeezed, and Steve looked up at her heart monitor, which had picked up.

“Hey,” he said, and he leaned in, adding his other hand to the one already holding onto hers— strong, reassuring… “We’re gonna work this out,” he said. “I promise.” His blue eyes held steady to hers, making her believe it. “I’m not gonna let him go down. Me and Natasha, we talked about it already— if it comes to it— if they can’t work out a deal—” He didn’t finish the sentence, but his face was serious, as resolute as she’d ever seen him about anything, and he nodded a little and said, “You got me?”

She nodded back, acknowledging him, but she couldn’t speak, her lips trembling a little as she tried to hold back her emotion.

He sighed then and relaxed back into his seat. “I think— this was gonna happen, one way or another, eventually. Maybe right now is the best time, with him bein’ so obviously a victim, still bein’ hunted… makes it clear he’s runnin’ from them… not a willing collaborator…”

“What are the lawyers saying?” she asked.

“They’re pretty optimistic,” said Steve, “They’re already workin’ the angles, ‘specially about him bein’ a POW. It ain’t like he was ever a deserter… even the files… Hydra’s own files… it was clear how hard he resisted, the lengths they had to go to, to break him down…”

She nodded and took in a shuddering breath. “He showed me,” she said. “I read it.”

“When he finally broke programming,” said Steve. “When we were fightin’ on the Helicarrier… after that— after he pulled me out of the river, he coulda gone back, coulda returned to the place they were keepin’ him. Requested… servicing. But he didn’t. He vanished. Escaped. That right there— shows he wasn’t collaborating, even when he had nowhere else to go.”

She adjusted her butt a little in the bed and winced as she felt the pull on her side, where they’d sewn her up. “I’m almost afraid to say it, but… I mean, that sounds… maybe it won’t be as bad as we thought…”

Steve nodded again, still holding her hand. “They say he’s got a real good case— they were even talkin’ about gettin’ him some of his benefits, his back-pay… his decorations he never got…”

“I want to see him,” she said finally, and she was crying a little now, and just then the nurse came back in the room, carrying an ugly institutional beige-colored plastic tray with a matching plastic pitcher on it, next to a styrofoam cup with a lid and a straw. She set it down on the rolling overbed table that was next to her, and then positioned it so that Darcy could reach it if she sat up. She started to do that, but the nurse stopped her and pressed the button on her bed, raising her body up instead.

“You should let her rest,” said the nurse, a judgmental tone in her voice when she took in the tears on Darcy’s face. She didn’t seem to give two shits that she was addressing Captain America.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Steve, and he started to stand up, but Darcy squeezed his hand, holding him there for a moment.

“Will you take a message to him for me?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said. “Anything.”

And then she didn’t know what to say, nothing adequate for how she felt: the relief of being alive and safe— both of them— the fear of what came next, with the authorities, but especially, the resolve she felt— unshakeable, boundless— that she would stand by him, no matter what…

So she just said, “Tell him…. tell him that I love him.”

And Steve nodded, still holding her hand, and he leaned down and kissed her on her forehead. “I’ll be back later,” he said. “Try to rest.”

<<>>

“What do you want to do with all the flowers?” asked Jane. It was a week later, and she was helping Darcy get ready for discharge from the hospital. She’d brought over some fresh clothes, once Darcy realized she had nothing to wear. Her original clothing, soaked with blood, had been collected by the police, and the only thing left for her in the ziplock bag of personal items that’d been removed upon her arrival at the E.R. were her filthy Chuck Taylors, and the heart-charm bracelet from Bucky, which the hospital staff had been thoughtful enough to wrap separately before adding it to the bag. Her IDs and backpack and laptop and anatomy book had been recovered by the police at the crime scene; her IDs had been returned to her, but the rest had been booked into evidence.

“I think most of them are on their last leg,” said Darcy, glancing at the collection of vases in the room, the various displays of ‘get well’ cards and balloons. Even her mother had sent something, although she hadn’t bothered to visit, explaining that it was too far to travel if Darcy wasn’t in any danger.

“Toss them, I guess,” she said. “Except for the daisies. I’m taking those with me.” 

Jane smiled and carefully moved the yellow ceramic vase over to the table of things they were taking. Bucky had sent the little bouquet of white daisies a few days before, along with a three-page handwritten letter, which Darcy had refused to let out of her sight, even taking it with her whenever she shuffled her way to the bathroom, rolling the IV pole next to her as she went.

Her favorite nurse, La’Rae, had smirked, and said, “I guess you got yourself one of the good ones, Mrs. Faramond,” when she’d seen her folding and re-folding the leaves of rumpled paper after reading the letter for the hundredth time.

“The best,” she’d said, grinning.

Now she stuck the folded-up letter into her jacket pocket and zipped it in, safe. She’d never even gotten a chance to see him, the federal agents taking him into immediate custody upon discharge. He’d almost blown it all, according to Sam— threatened to rip himself free from their ridiculous measures to contain him, demanding to see her, but Steve had talked him down, convinced him not to play into their games.

He was being held at a federal prison camp in New Jersey, which had sounded awful— the words ‘prison camp’ not seeming very former-POW-friendly— until Sam had explained to her that they were among the most minimally-secure prisons in the country, and were in fact referred to derisively as ‘Club Fed’ by those angry at the perceived special privileges granted to the mostly white-collar criminals who were housed there.

He wasn’t even an actual inmate— they’d just needed somewhere to put him, while they tried to figure out what to do with him— the system had no prescribed way to address the uniqueness of his situation. Ironically, the camp was made up of old WWII-era barracks, complete with a lack of air conditioning, and his clueless ivy-league attorneys had joked that the veteran would feel ‘right at home.’ Luckily the lack of air conditioning hadn’t been an issue in October and November, when highs were in the mid-50s.

The whole thing was frankly ludicrous, as they’d have locked him into some max-security solitary pit if they’d really considered him a threat or a flight risk— there was nothing about the facility that could have contained Bucky had he intended to escape, to disappear once more… the entire exercise was more like a mutual playing out of trust and intent.

Unlike Bucky, Darcy was headed to more glamorous accommodations, now that she was being released: back to their apartment at the Tower, which Ms. Potts had assured her was theirs to keep as long as they needed a place to stay.

“What are you going to do about school?” said Jane, watching Darcy wince as she tried to lean over to tie her shoelaces. “Here, let me do that,” she said.

“Well,” said Darcy, straightening up. “I mean, obviously I’m fucked for this semester… but the plan is to start up again after winter break.” She paused then, let some of her ambivalence show. “I might do some of it online, if I can. The prereqs, at least.” The idea of returning to campus, retracing that route… the drive in the car with Bucky on that drizzly day… she saw it a lot: his smile as he reached to catch the keys…

“Maybe we’ll move,” she said. “When he gets out.” It was always ‘ _when_ ;’ never ‘ _if_ ’… She sighed and then stated the obvious: “I’m gonna need a fuck-ton of therapy…”

“Don’t give up on school,” said Jane. She’d finished tying the shoes, and then pushed herself up and sat down next to Darcy on the bed. “I mean, take some time, for sure, but…” Jane had never really stated her opinion on the prosthetics program, but now she did. “It’d be a huge loss. For you and for them. I think— I _know_ — you’re gonna be really good at it. And, I mean… it’ll give you something to do, while…”

“Yeah,” she said, and looked at the bracelet she now held in her hand. The little red charm had a scratch running through it, probably from the handcuffs. She rubbed at it with her fingertip, but it was sunk into the enamel: there to stay. She undid the clasp, looped it around her wrist and then tried to connect it, but the other end kept falling off every time she nudged it, until Jane finally leaned over and helped her attach it.

“It’s gonna be okay,” she said, and Darcy nodded, needing to believe it, as the other woman hugged her.

<<>>

“It’s a good compromise,” Steve was saying, as he explained the deal to Darcy in more detail. They were halfway through the two-hour drive to Fort Dix. Halfway to her first time seeing him in seven weeks, other than their twice-weekly Skype sessions, which they’d had to fight for, and which were never private: the feds would only allow him internet access if he had his lawyer present, chaperoning, and he’d been allowed no visitors other than his approved counsel.

She hadn’t touched his skin or felt the warmth of his breath since their captivity in the White Plains house, and now she was practically vibrating with anticipation, as she watched the scenery zip by on I-95. He was being released from custody today— he had to wear an ankle monitor until his scheduled court date; but for now, he was coming home.

His attorneys were confident that the court-martial would be a formality— that in fact if they’d pressed harder, they could have had the collaboration charges dropped entirely— but they contended that it would be better for him, in the long run, to see it through this way. It was important, they’d said, for his name to be cleared in such a way that there was no question of corruption— of money changing hands— an inevitable accusation, when Tony Stark’s name became involved, and the press getting wind of the drama, which had proved unavoidable.

The feds, for their part, had kept it simple. Knowing it would be impossible for them to prove that he’d been a willing, cognizant participant in the assassinations carried out as the Winter Soldier, and with public sympathy increasing for the resurrected James Barnes, Howling Commando, lost friend of Captain America (the internet had gone _berserk_ ), they were under pressure to find an honorable solution.

Add to that the embarrassment of botching the investigation of the Vermont farm connection— Steve had argued that if the feds had done their jobs and thoroughly investigated Patricia Hansen, they would have uncovered the Hydra connection weeks before the attack in the parking garage.

That same day, while Bucky and Darcy were fighting for their lives, Steve and his team had knocked on the door of the Hansen farm, and Mrs. Hansen had practically wet herself when she saw the Black Widow standing there. There’d been no question of escape, no time to even swallow a cyanide capsule, as Hydra members were wont to do.

A basic search of the property had turned up damning amounts of Hydra contraband going back decades, the most significant of which was in their niece’s room. Ada Hansen, aka Adeleine Pierce, seemed to have had an obsession with the Winter Soldier, and had amassed exhaustive amounts of information on his history, programming, and operation.

She’d been raised in Hydra by her aunt and uncle, but it was upon the death of her father, Alexander Pierce, that she’d really come into her inheritance— he’d intended for her to become the Soldier’s primary handler, and had supplied her with all the information necessary to do so. It’d apparently been his way of saying, ‘sorry,’ for the murder of Ada’s mother and sister, whom Pierce had needed to get rid of when they’d discovered his affiliation with the organization.

It was unlikely that the higher-ups would have gone along with that plan once the elder Pierce was gone, but they’d never had a chance to find out— nobody could have foreseen the Soldier going AWOL. Adeleine, taking it upon herself to actively track him down, using both Hydra tech and outside resources, had seen an opportunity— not only to increase her standing within Hydra, but to get some special _alone-time_ with him, before handing him over…

The feds, having missed all of this, were suitably humiliated, though they redeemed themselves somewhat by assisting in the follow-up on the fake-Wells group, which had been employed by Adeleine to help locate and then recover the Soldier.

Erica Reyer had been a high-level operative in a nasty little group of mercenaries who dabbled in kidnappings, assassinations, and human trafficking, and the information recovered from the Hansen farm went a long way to uncovering one of their bases of operations, the raid on which lead to dozens of arrests, and the recovery of seventeen missing persons, some of them children.

The Avengers proved invaluable in the raid, and when the dust finally settled, the feds were happy to take full credit for the dramatic operation, in exchange for being more amenable to a deal with their in-custody super-soldier.

In exchange for dropping all charges, Sergeant Barnes would work with them to fill in a multitude of blank spaces in their intelligence— miles of paperwork with unknowns that he was in a position to illuminate… details of governments, individuals, operations going back decades… as well as to consult on current investigations, where appropriate. He’d signed a deal to work with them, either directly or on loan to other alphabet agencies, for four years, without compensation. His lawyers didn’t like it, but Bucky had confessed to Darcy that he felt he was getting off easy.

In the meantime, and in light of his inability to seek gainful employment while working for the feds, his attorneys had secured three years of military back-pay for him— with interest. It was still a trifle, considering how long he’d been captive, but those initial years of active resistance— Hydra damning themselves with their detailed documentation of their prisoner’s stubborn nature— were all the U.S. government was willing to compensate upfront. The lawyers were going to keep pushing for compensation for all the time the court could not prove he was actively killing for Hydra, which would include all the years stolen from him in cryostasis.

When he’d received the first check, he’d held it up to the Starkpad screen so that Darcy could see it, his face conveying his disbelief, while his attorney in the background merely shrugged and said he could expect more where those came from, and suggested he stick it in a Vanguard account for maximum growth.

There were some downsides, to be sure— with his existence finally outed by the press, the maintenance of their ‘secret’ identities had become ludicrous, impossible.

Within a week of leaving the hospital, Bucky’s face— both as the dashing Sgt. Barnes in his 1940s uniform, and as the long-haired, metal-armed assassin in Washington— was plastered on every tabloid newspaper and half of the magazines in the newsstands.

It was terrifying at first, knowing that short of plastic surgery, there would be no going back— no way for him to hide again… but after a time there was a sort of peace to it— an acceptance. It took practice to live like Natasha— to, as she’d said, prepare for the possibilities… live in strength rather than fear— but like most things, it would, presumably, grow easier with time.

<<>>

They’d arrived a little early, and Steve slowed as they drove down a narrow two-lane road past flat, grass-covered recreational fields and rectangular orange-brick buildings, walled off by a perimeter of security fencing topped with a triple row of barbed wire. The other side of the road was thick with trees still hanging onto their brilliant fall colors, and it seemed too pretty for a prison, all that nature showing off in red and gold and orange.

He handed Darcy the instructions he’d jotted down— rather than pick Bucky up at the usual location for surrender and discharge, they were to proceed past the main gate to a checkpoint further down, closer to the adjacent military base. The attorneys had negotiated several measures to avoid leaks to the press, wishing to ensure his safety and privacy—the remote pickup site being one of them. It was also a non-visitor day, and with a pickup time of 5:30 p.m., most of the population— both inmates and staff— would be eating, working, or otherwise contained.

Steve found the appointed gate, which stretched across an unstriped road leading north into the camp. It was flanked by two large broadleaf trees that had already dropped most of their leaves, with just a few flame-colored streaks still touching the branches; a single faded stop sign warned anyone approaching to keep back. A parking lot filled with white service vehicles lay just inside the gates to the left, and after that, more of the orange-brick buildings sat on both sides of the road as far back as they could see.

There was nowhere to officially park, so Steve just pulled off the road into the trampled-down grass on the shoulder, and turned off the engine, and for a moment they both just sat, unspeaking, and then Steve looked over at her, where she was playing with the silver beads of her bracelet, nervous.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Just excited, I think.”

“You wanna wait in here, or get some fresh air.”

“Fresh air would be nice,” she said, and they unbuckled and got out, and she walked around to join him on the driver’s side, where they both leaned against the car, staring down the road into the camp.

They had about ten minutes, give or take, and the sun was just starting to go down. The air was crisp and fresh and quiet. Darcy was wearing comfortable jeans, a bright red shirt that caught the color of the little charm bracelet, and a black, cool-weather jacket. Her new Chucks were a soft steel blue, reminding her of Bucky’s eyes. She had her arms crossed, and she was tapping her toe a little. She couldn’t take her eyes off the road.

“You guys got any plans?” asked Steve.

“Nope,” she said, and she grinned.

Steve blushed a little, and shuffled his feet, and said, “I mean, uh… you know, the coming week… before he starts up his thing with the feds…”

“Not really,” she said. “We didn’t talk about it. I mean, what’s to plan? I’m just gonna be so goddamned happy, no matter what we’re doing. I could just sit there and eat scrambled eggs and be the happiest motherfucker on the planet, if he’s sitting there with me.”

“Eggs, huh?” said Steve, teasing her. He had this thing he liked to do now, where he picked out the least colorful of her words to highlight in any given statement. It made her laugh, every time. They’d gotten closer in the past month and a half, and he’d been there for her, along with Sam and Jane, when she’d struggled with the uglier side of what’d happened, and what she’d done.

She had no regrets for killing Pierce— not even secret ones— but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a heavy thing, taking a life. Sometimes she worried that she should feel worse about it, and the feeling came up at odd, unexpected times, like now, as she stared down the road, wondering about the men within, whether any of them had killed too, besides her Bucky, and what their reasons had been. The man standing next to her had certainly killed, and sometimes, over the past weeks, she’d asked him about it.

“Do you ever stop thinking about them?” she said now, as they watched the road together. “About the people you killed?”

“You havin’ nightmares again?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I mean, not lately. It’s different now. Like there’s this… photo album inside… pictures my brain took, and I get to look through it forever, even if I don’t really want to anymore. It’s not even like I feel _bad_ … I just— I want to be done with it. Don’t want her in my head anymore.”

“Don’t know if that’s really possible,” he said. “I mean, it’s part of you— it happened. Don’t mean you gotta let it be the big thing you feel about it though— about what happened.”

“What do you mean?” she asked. If shooting someone’s face in half wasn’t the ‘big thing’ about the incident, she wasn’t quite sure what was.

“Look at it this way,” he said. “You didn’t kill someone because you wanted to— I mean, not exactly; you killed her because you had to. You killed her to save yourself. To save Bucky.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I know that. That’s why I’m not, like, riddled with suffocating guilt or whatever.”

“Well,” he said, and he could see a speck then, in the distance, getting bigger, and it was maybe a car, coming toward them on the road inside the camp, and he looked down at Darcy, her hair blowing gently around her face in the evening breeze. “That’s the big thing for me. I don’t think about the people I’ve killed. I find it’s better, if you think about the people you saved.”

And she looked up at him then and gave him one of her little smiles, the ones just for Steve, her friend, and that he knew were because she loved him, and he loved her back, and then he tilted his head toward the road, because the car was coming now, for sure, and she turned and saw it too, and she dropped her arms and took in a deep breath, unabashed in her excitement, and he put his hand on her upper back, a little rub that said, _I know_ …

And then the car made it to the gate, and it stopped and the driver got out— a uniformed guard— and the man walked around to the passenger side, and Darcy could see him in there inside, a shadow, the outline of his head and shoulders…

And when he stepped out of the car he was already looking at her, and he was only thirty feet away— really there— and he grinned, and her own smile just about broke her face in half. He was wearing grey sweatpants with a generic maroon T-shirt, a navy hoodie, and ugly white prison sneakers, and he totally looked like a dork, but he was the most beautiful dork she’d ever seen, and her entire body felt tight and warm and ready to explode; she’d never felt anything like it…

And he never stopped looking at her as the guard unlocked the handcuff that held his one wrist to a belly chain, and the guard undid the chain too, and took it off, and then handed him a big transparent-plastic bag that had his few personal items in it, and then the guard held out his hand and said something to him, and Bucky finally broke his gaze to turn and look at the man and shake his hand, and she could see that he said, “Thank you.”

And then the guard spoke into a walkie-talkie and the gate was opening sideways, threading its way into the adjacent fence, and then she was running as he stepped through…

And Steve watched as she _jumped_ into his friend’s body, and Bucky’s arm came around to hold her to him, supporting her as she wrapped all of her limbs around him like she never wanted to let go, and then she was kissing him, and Steve could see his friend smiling behind the kiss, happy, and the sun was going down, the same color as the leaves, all scarlet and gold and flame, and Steve breathed in the clean autumn air and felt lucky.


	36. Chapter 36

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The End

Epilogue

 

“I think this is it,” she said, and Bucky turned the Jeep Wrangler into the little driveway, pulled up to the end, which was blocked off by a weathered, unpainted wood fence, and parked. The owner’s vehicle, a tiny Hyundai the color of blueberries, was parked right on the front yard, diagonally, next to a young tree, and a birdhouse mounted on a pole.

Darcy yawned and unbuckled and popped open the door, and slowly slid out of the vehicle, stretching when her feet hit the ground.

“Tired, sweetheart?” he asked, as he grabbed her stuff from the back seat.

“Yeah,” she said, “But I’ll be fine. I’ll take a nap, later.”

“I’m gonna hold you to that,” he said, pretending to be stern, and he kissed her forehead affectionately. At thirty-four, Darcy was starting to notice some new lines on her face, and she had a habit of fussing at them in the mirror in the morning, but Bucky just scoffed at her scrutiny, saying she was like a ‘fine wine’— just getting better with age. If it’d been anyone else saying that shit, she would have rolled her eyes and argued and been offended, but the thing with Bucky was that he actually meant it.

“You got an extra hair tie?” he asked.

“Yup,” she said, pulling one off her wrist and handing it over. He was wearing his hair long again, and it was beautiful, but he always pulled it back and made it look tidy when they were meeting a new family. “You look pretty,” she said, grinning, as he primped in one of the Jeep’s side mirrors. “Come on, handsome; they’re probably waiting.”

The small brick house was modest, but cheerful, and Darcy smiled at the little beds of white-and-pink periwinkles that lined the path to the front door, and then pressed the doorbell.

A pale-skinned thirty-something woman with long, turquoise-colored hair and matching plastic eyeglass frames opened the door a minute later, and she beamed and held out her hand and said, “Doctor Lewis?”

“That’s me,” said Darcy, shaking hands. “And this is my partner, Bucky.”

“I’m so excited,” said the woman, and she did an actual, real-live happy dance, there in the entryway, and Darcy couldn’t help smiling.

“So come on in,” said the woman, waving them into the house, and they followed her into a little kitchen, where she invited them to sit down at a round breakfast table, where there was room for Darcy to set out her things. “I’ll go get him,” she said, and after she left the room, they could hear her calling, “Martin— they’re here…”

A couple minutes later the woman reappeared, this time physically pushing a sullen-looking pre-teen boy in front of her, into the room. She put her hand on his shoulders, steering him toward the table, and sat him down in an empty chair. He didn’t greet them, instead just sighing pointedly, to let them all know how very excited he was to be there.

He was a good-looking kid— a little on the thin side, as was typical for many boys his age— light brown skin, gorgeous thick curly brown hair, and large, deep-brown eyes. He was also missing an arm.

“This is Martin,” his mother said. “He, uh… he’s a little pissed off because I interrupted his coding.”

“Oh you like to code?” said Darcy. “That’s cool. What do you code in?”

“Python, mostly,” said the kid, but he didn’t make eye contact. He was still in a full-scale sulk.

“Well, if you like tech, I think you’re gonna be super excited about some of the stuff we can show you,” she said.

The kid didn’t respond, so his mom spoke for him, saying, “Great,” and Darcy put on her reading glasses and opened her tablet, and then pulled up the screen of options, just like Hameed had done for Bucky, in preparation for his first non-Hydra arm, years ago.

“Oh wow….” said the mom, obviously impressed by what she was seeing. “Are these really— these are seriously part of the program?” she said.

“Yup,” said Darcy.

“All of them?”

“Yup. And a kid Martin’s age… he’s thirteen, right? Yeah. He’s gonna need a new one probably…. let’s say every three years, maybe every two if he really sprouts up and changes. So if he finds out he’s not crazy about some aspect, no biggie— he can change it up the next time, try something else.”

The mom sat back, overwhelmed for a moment. “I guess I’m still adjusting to it. It doesn’t seem real. I mean, why us— why’d we get so lucky…”

“The foundation does a pretty good job of finding the right people for the service,” said Darcy. “I’ve yet to work with a family where I felt like, ‘nuh uh,’ these people are gettin’ kicked off the list…”

“Martin, you gotta look at these,” the mom said, sitting up again. “I mean, take a look at that one,” she said, pointing to one of the really tech-heavy hybrids. “That seems so totally up your alley…”

The kid gave a cursory glance at it, and then shrugged and almost sneered. “It probably doesn’t even look like that,” he said. “I bet it’s like the drive-thru, where the picture is super awesome and then you get it, and you think, ‘what the hell is this crap?”

“Martin…” said the mom, embarrassed.

“It’s okay,” said Darcy, liking the kid enormously. “I totally agree with him about the drive-thru, but this isn’t gonna be like that.” She turned to the kid and poked him in the shoulder. “Hey,” she said, “you wanna see how cool it really is?”

And then she swiveled to Bucky, who was sitting off to the side, and said, “Hey babe— show him your hand. Do the thing.” And she scooted back in her chair, so that Bucky could slide over in his, and he plopped his left hand— the artificial one— down on the table, right by the kid, where he couldn’t ignore it, and he did this thing where he tapped his thumb to three of his fingertips, in a certain sequence, and then did a swipe down his pinky, like you’d do on a smartphone, and the flesh mirage of the hand shimmered and then disappeared, revealing the complicated bionics within.

“What the— holy shit,” said the kid, sitting up. “That is so _fucking cool_ …”

The mom winced and said, “God, I’m so sorry… he gets it from me… I’ve got a horrible potty mouth…”

Darcy was laughing and said, “No, it’s fine, really,” and she turned to Martin and she said, “It’d _better_ be fucking cool; I designed it.”

And Martin sat entranced, as Bucky went through the features of the arm that she’d made, and the mom watched him silently, a soft smile on her face, one that Darcy had seen many times now in this work, and which made all the long plane rides and dusty drives and endless hours totally worth it. She’d gotten her doctorate finally— pretty much a necessity for getting anyone to take her seriously when she slapped her name on someone’s grant proposal— but her passion was in working with families directly, and that’s where she’d remained, in spite of the opportunities available to her with the advanced credential.

“Are you— will you be able to get it all finished for him in time?” the mom finally said quietly, breaking out of her reverie. She gestured to Darcy’s basketball of a tummy, which was pushing the limits on the stretch of her knit maternity top. “Looks like you don’t have that much longer to go.”

“Don’t worry,” she said, smiling, putting her hand on her bump. “I’ve still got seven weeks to go— I know; I’m _huge_ , right?” Bucky looked over at her briefly, grinning. “And you’re our last and only job before I go on leave,” she said. “I’ll be working on it nonstop until it’s done.”

“Okay, great,” said the woman, relaxing again, and then she said, “Is it your first?”

“Yup,” said Darcy.

“Thought so,” said the mom. “You guys— you have that ‘first time’ glow about you…” She looked a little wistful, maybe remembering her own, and then she said, “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

“We want it to be a surprise,” said Darcy.

“Aw, that’s nice,” said the mom, smiling. “Not too many people do that anymore, you know?”

“Well…,” said Darcy, “I mean, the whole thing was a pretty big surprise in the first place, so…” And then she quickly clarified when the mom looked mortified for a second, afraid she’d stepped into a sensitive topic. “In a _good_ way,” she said. “We, uh… we didn’t think we could…”

And then the mom’s face softened again, and she got another one of those smiles, like the one she’d worn when she saw her son’s face light up, looking at Bucky’s prosthetic arm. “God,” she said, “it’s so nice to hear something _good_ like that, you know? Like, there’s just so much shitty stuff in the world now… sometimes it’s hard to remember that not everything sucks…”

She seemed to shake herself mentally, and then she said, “Anyway, congratulations. That’s just… I dunno, I just met you, but it gives me hope… makes me happy for some reason…”

“Thanks,” said Darcy, and she grinned one of her big, gappy-toothed smiles. “Makes me pretty happy too.” And then she slid the tablet over to the mom again, and they started swiping through the options, and at some point she caught Bucky’s eye over the table, and he said it all without speaking, and she said it back, her eyes dancing, and then they got to work figuring out the details of Martin’s brand-new arm.

 

-End-


End file.
